THE   NEW  PEACE 


WILLIAM  LOUIS  POTEAT 


LIBRARY  OF  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT 


v° 


FEB  7  1916 


BL  240  .P62  1915 

Poteat,  William  Louis,  1856 

1938. 
The  new  peace 


Lci6T 
Tot  A 


THE  NEW  PEACE 

Lectures  on  Science  and 
Religion 

BY 

WILLIAM   LOUIS  POTEAT 
M.A.,  LL.D. 

Peace  settles  where  the  intellect  is  meek. — Wordsworth. 


BOSTON:     RICHARD  G.  BADGER 

TORONTO:     THE    COPP   CLARK    CO.,    LIMITED 


Copyright,  191 5,  by  Richard  G.  Badger 
All  rights  reserved 


The  Gorham  Press,  Boston,  U.  S.  A. 


To 

The  Memory  of  My  Father 

JAMES  POTEAT 

And  My  Mother 

julia  a.  McNeill  poteat 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

The  lectures  which  are  here  published  were 
given  in  May,  1905,  on  the  Brooks  Foundation 
in  Hamilton  Theological  Seminary  of  Colgate 
University.  In  October  and  November  of  the 
same  year  they  were  repeated  in  Crozer  Theo- 
logical Seminary,  Newton  Theological  Institution, 
Rochester  Theological  Institution,  and  the  Divin- 
ity School  of  the  University  of  Chicago.  Dr. 
William  Newton  Clarke,  of  Hamilton,  and  others 
for  whose  judgment  I  have  the  highest  respect 
urged  the  publication  of  the  lectures,  but,  excepting 
extracts  which  have  appeared  in  two  issues  of 
The  South  Atlantic  Quarterly,  they  have  lain  by 
me  for  one  reason  or  another  now  nearly  ten  years. 
They  are  now  presented  in  their  original  form. 
No  revision  seems  to  be  required  by  the  passing 
of  this  period.  Certain  unimportant  time  refer- 
ences and  illustrations  need  not  be  noted  in  de- 
tail because  the  reader  will  recognize  them  as  of 
1905,  not  1915. 

My  hesitation  has  been  mainly  due  to  the  re- 
flection that  to  many  minds  the  whole  discussion 
will  seem  out  of  date.     They  have  already  reached 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

the  conclusion  to  which  it  leads,  and  are  now  in- 
terested in  the  more  positive  and  practical  aspects 
of  religion.  Any  such  readers  I  can  hope  to  serve 
in  only  two  ways, —  by  providing  a  convenient 
summary  of  an  argument  which  they  may  be 
pleased  to  recall,  and  by  seeking  to  increase  their 
number. 

My  dependence  and  obligations  are  but  slightly 
indicated  by  references  here  and  there.     Indeed,  I 
seem  to  have  done  little  more  than  bring  together 
the  thoughts  of  other  men.     So  far  from  making 
any  claim  to  originality  of  matter  or  treatment,  I 
am  only  mediating  the  intellectual  movement  of 
our  revolutionary  period  in  the  interest  of  those 
who,  although  close  enough  to  be  disturbed  by  it, 
have  had  inadequate  opportunities  to  follow  it. 
William  Louis  Poteat. 
Wake  Forest  College, 
February  22,  igi 5. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION 9 

The  Present  Situation 10 

Plan  of  the  Lectures 22 

LECTURE 

I      WHAT  IS  SCIENCE? 27 

Definition     ....          32 

The  Scientific  Method 38 

Results 42 

II      THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 49 

Classification '5° 

Outside  Facts 52 

Inside  Facts 59 

The  Function  of  Science 63 

The  Relations  of  Science 7* 

Science  and  Physical  Well-Being  ...  72 

Science  and  Culture 75 

III       SCIENCE   IN   RELIGION 91 

What  is  Religion? 92 

The  Religious  Crisis 101 

Science  in  Religion 122 

IV      RELIGION  IN  SCIENCE 13 1 

The  Spirit  of  Science 136 

The  Faith  of  Science 141 

The  Bearing  of  Science 145 

The  Unity  of  Nature 147 

The  New  Teleology 1 50 

The  Idealistic  Interpretation  of  Nature     .  157 


Science  discloses  the  method  of  the  world,  but  not  its  cause; 
Religion  its  cause,  but  not  its  method;  and  there  is  no  conflict 
between  them  except  when  either  forgets  its  ignorance  of  what 
the  other  alone  can  know. 

—  James   Martineau. 

He  saw  two  angels  who  came  one  from  the  South  and  the 
other  from  the  East.  When  they  came  close  to  him  in  heaven, 
the  angel  from  the  East  clothed  in  purple  and  the  angel  from 
the  South  in  hyacinth  color  rushed  together  like  two  breaths  of 
wind,  and  were  one.  One  was  an  angel  of  Love  and  the  other 
was  an  angel  of  Wisdom.  Swedenborg's  guide  told  him  that  on 
earth  these  two  angels  had  been  bound  by  an  inward  sympathy 
and  constantly  united,  though  divided  by  space. 

—  Balzac,   Seraphita. 

The  differences  of  Idealism  and  Materialism  are  complemen- 
tary, not  antagonistic ;  and  thought  will  never  be  completely 
fruitful  until  the  one  unites  with  the  other.  .  .  .  It  is  an  indis- 
putable truth  that  what  we  call  the  material  world  is  only 
known  to  us  under  the  forms  of  the  ideal  world.  .  .  .  The  ex- 
tension of  the  conceptions  and  of  the  methods  of  physical  science 
to  the  highest  as  well  as  the  lowest  phenomena  of  vitality  is 
neither  more  nor  less  than  a  sort  of  shorthand  Idealism;  and 
Descartes'  two  paths  meet  at  the  summit  of  the  mountain,  though 
they  set  out  on  opposite  sides  of  it. 

—  Huxley,  Descartes'  Discourse  on  Method. 


THE  NEW  PEACE 


INTRODUCTION 

MY  first  duty  is  a  personal  one.  I  beg  to 
express  to  you  the  high  estimation  in  which 
I  have  held  this  lectureship.1  The  history  of 
culture  is  everywhere  the  history  of  intercourse. 
The  most  backward  tribes  of  men,  as  the  in- 
habitants of  the  Andaman  Islands  and  of  Central 
Africa,  do  not  know  one  another  and  are  in  the 
state  of  chronic  hostility,  as,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  most  advanced  sections  of  the  race  are  those 
in  which  communication  is  widest  and  freest. 
It  must  be  so  in  the  case  of  distinct  departments 
of  inquiry.  Each  of  them  is  under  its  own  law, 
but  owes  a  higher  allegiance  to  the  unity  of  all 
truth.  Specialism  is  perpetually  threatened  by 
the  nemesis  of  isolation,  and  isolation  in  the  in- 
tellectual realm  is  the  mother  of  strife  and  has 
but  one  eye,  and  that  dim  with  a  cataract.  The 
Brooks  foundation  recognizes  the  higher  law  of 
fellowship  in  the  kingdom  of  truth.     From  time 

1  The  Brooks  Foundation  in  Hamilton  Theological  Seminary. 
9 


io  THE  NEW  PEACE 

to  time  it  calls  into  the  school  of  theology  a 
worker  in  the  school  of  science,  and  however  in- 
different his  particular  service  may  be,  the  total 
result  cannot  but  be  reciprocally  beneficial  in  the 
highest  degree  to  the  two  schools  of  thought.  I 
am  not  sure  that  such  an  example  of  the  hospi- 
tality of  theology  towards  science  ought  not  to 
be  emulated  oftener  by  science  in  openness  to 
informed  theological  suggestion.  As  I  think  we 
shall  see  presently,  science  has  not  been  able  to 
answer  all  her  questions,  and  on  the  deepest  of 
them,  I  half  suspect,  the  hopeful  digging  must  be 
done  over  the  fence  in  the  theological  preserve. 
My  own  appointment  to  service  upon  this  honor- 
able foundation,  you  will  let  me  say,  has  been 
the  occasion  of  the  keenest  personal  gratification. 
I  venture  to  hope  that  our  thinking  together  on 
the  great  themes  which  invite  us  will,  at  least  in 
some  scant  measure,  promote  the  aims  of  the 
noble  man  in  whose  memory  we  shall  be  meeting. 

The  Present  Situation 

It  will  probably  be  serviceable  to  pause  on  the 
threshold  of  our  discussion  in  order  to  examine 
briefly  the  present  situation  of  the  religion  and 
science  question. 

And  first  let  me  remind  you  that  knowledge 
is  not  hereditary,  though  the  capacity  for  knowl- 


INTRODUCTION  1 1 

edge  may  be.  It  is  only  the  receptacle  that  our 
ancestry  furnishes.  We  must  fill  it  ourselves. 
Nor  is  knowledge  a  devisable  commodity.  It  is 
always  self-acquired.  Experience  keeps  the  only 
school  there  is.  In  the  literal  sense,  but  in  no 
other,  does  the  child  start  life  on  his  father's 
shoulder.  He  must  begin  at  the  ground.  He 
must  pick  his  own  path  through  the  labyrinth. 
The  law  may  seem  severe  and  the  spectacle  pa- 
thetic, but  there  is  no  release.  A  generation 
fares  no  better  in  this  regard  than  the  individual. 
It  does  not  stand  on  the  shoulders  of  its  pred- 
ecessor. Except  in  the  mere  appurtenances  of 
life,  it  starts  life  afresh.  It  is,  indeed,  born  into 
its  environment,  but  must  conquer  its  place  there. 
The  very  language  which  it  will  speak  it  must 
acquire;  the  implements  of  its  intellectual  and 
spiritual  achievement  it  must  grow.  Its  own  pe- 
culiar problems,  practical,  social,  intellectual,  it 
must  treat  precisely  as  if  no  preceding  generation 
ever  had  a  problem.  In  all  its  larger  and  higher 
interests  the  so-called  lessons  of  history,  by  some 
strange  lapse  of  memory  or  defect  of  adaptation, 
seem  not  to  be  available. 

Accordingly,  it  turns  out  that  successive  periods 
in  the  history  of  thought,  from  the  earliest  to 
the  latest,  in  spite  of  the  peculiar  features  which 
individualize  them,  present  a  curious  family  re- 


12  THE  NEW  PEACE 

semblance.  Such  common  traits  stand  out  with 
striking  distinctness  in  a  comparison  of  the 
periods  properly  styled  revolutionary  —  periods 
when  a  new  view  has  turned  things  topsy-turvy, 
when  a  new  method  has  been  grasped,  or  a  new 
province  added  to  the  intellectual  domain.  For 
human  nature  is  very  human  wherever  you  come 
upon  it.  It  responds  in  much  the  same  way, 
whatever  stimulus  is  applied.  As  the  optic  nerve 
and  visual  centre  under  any  excitation,  whether 
luminous  or  mechanical  or  electrical,  unvaryingly 
react  with  the  sensation  of  light  in  accordance 
with  their  specific  energy,  so  human  thought,  in 
response  to  the  deep  stirring  of  it  by  any  sort  of 
agency,  takes  up  one  predictable  itinerary,  passing 
from  attitude  to  attitude  unconsciously  in  the  very 
tracks  which  it  made  when  it  was  last  stirred  to 
movement.  One  would  suppose  antecedently 
that  those  who  form  and  guide  the  thought  cur- 
rents in  these  revolutionary  periods  must  be  famil- 
iar with  the  history  of  opinion,  and  in  the  light 
of  that  history,  although  they  might  not  be  able 
to  forestall  the  repetition  of  its  distressing  fea- 
tures, would  at  least  be  on  guard  against  over- 
sensitiveness  to  their  influence  in  view  of  their 
recognized  transitional  character.  But  it  has  not 
in  very  fact  been  so  —  not  even  in  the  last  revolu- 
tion, which  has  had  the  double  advantage  of  the 


INTRODUCTION  13 

largest  number  of  monitory  examples  and  the 
widest  intelligence  to  apprehend  them.  So  little 
can  we  learn  from  those  who  have  gone  this 
way  before  us.2  We  must  needs  have  our  own 
experience  and,  unhelped  of  the  counselling  past, 
work  out  our  own  salvation  with  fear  and  trem- 
bling. 

Nevertheless,  it  will  be  worth  while,  at  our 
leisure,  to  place  our  epoch  alongside  its  fellows 
of  the  former  time.  They  will  throw  light  upon 
it,  and  suggest  a  hopeful  issue.  It  will  take  the 
edge  off  any  anxiety  which  we  may  feel  to-day, 
if  we  are  in  a  position  to  reflect  that  the  present 
distress  is  not  without  precedent,  that  "  it  hath 
been  already  in  the  ages  which  were  before  us." 
We  shall  see  that,  as  heretofore  so  now,  the 
threatened  passing  of  religion  is  only  another 
false  alarm,  and  that  the  terror  with  which  many 
minds  have  watched  the  eclipse  of  faith  as  if 
it  were  the  closing  in  of  night  is  not  wholly  devoid 
of  a  ludicrous  suggestiveness. 

A  recent  student  of  the  transitional  eras  in  the 
history  of  human  thought  has  cited  four  as  typi- 
cal,—  the  era  of  the  Greek  Sophists  in  the  fifth 
century  before  Christ,  the  era  of  transition  from 
mediaeval  to  modern  times,  the  Illumination  era 

2  Ecclesiastes,  i  :n. 


i4  THE  NEW  PEACE 

of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  the  present  era.3 
There  is  no  time  for  so  much  as  a  bare  sketch 
of  the  forces  in  which  the  first  three  of  these 
eras  took  their  rise,  or  of  their  special  features 
and  issue.  It  must  suffice  here  to  point  out  the 
constant  features  which  reappear  in  them  all  as 
well  as  in  our  own  era,  which  of  course  is  the 
concern  of  these  lectures.  We  observe,  first,  the 
coming  of  the  new  thought  like  the  irruption  of 
an  armed  band  into  the  peace  of  a  secluded  valley. 
Under  the  sanction  of  its  convincingness,  there  fol- 
lows criticism  of  the  old  thought  as  being  incom- 
patible; then  disintegration,  confusion,  and  a  skep- 
tical despair,  spreading  beyond  the  borders  of 
speculation  to  invade  the  realm  of  conduct;  then 
springs  up  dissatisfaction  with  the  method  and 
results  of  negation,  to  be  followed  shortly  with 
the  constructive  work  of  adjustment  and  reor- 
ganization, wherein  is  gathered  up  what  was  vital 
and  precious  in  the  old  thought  freshened  and 
enriched  by  the  incorporation  of  the  new. 

In  our  own  epoch  these  typical  transition  stages, 
which  of  course  are  stated  here  in  the  logical 
order,  are  easily  recognizable, —  the  last  of  the 
stages,  I  venture  to  say,  already  realized,  as  dis- 
tinctly as  the  others,  in  a  large  section  of  the 
serious-minded    world.     But    the    interest    which 

3  Armstrong,  "  Transitional  Eras  in  Thought,"  Chap.  II. 


INTRODUCTION  15 

this  great  transition  has  for  us  lies  also  in  part 
in  the  special  features  which  differentiate  it  from 
its  predecessors.  For  example,  many  streams 
from  the  older  times  pour  their  floods  into  ours 
to  give  it  an  unexampled  complexity.  We  are 
occupied,  indeed,  with  the  problems  which  the 
Illumination  left  unsettled,  but  from  a  somewhat 
different  point  of  view.  Besides,  we  have  prob- 
lems of  our  own  which,  while  their  seeds 
sprouted  before,  yet  reached  the  acme  of  develop- 
ment, became  acute  problems,  in  our  period  and 
distinguish  it.  But  the  chief  differentia  of  this 
transitional  era  are, —  democracy,  with  popular 
enlightenment,  industrialism,  and  physical  science, 
each  with  a  wide  range  of  influence  upon  con- 
temporary life  and  thought.  All  these  peculiar 
features  must  be  set  on  one  side,  except  the  last. 
They  are  interesting  in  themselves  and  important, 
but  are  beside  the  present  purpose.  Science  and 
the  new  phase  of  the  religious  question  which  it 
brought  on  —  these  set  the  limits  of  our  inquiry. 
How  did  science  bring  on  the  religious  ques- 
tion? What  is  the  genesis  of  this  disastrous  con- 
troversy between  the  men  of  science  and  the  men 
of  religion?  In  the  first  place,  the  Reformers 
who  scouted  an  infallible  church  set  up  an  in- 
fallible book  as  the  ultimate  authority  on  all  mat- 
ters to  which  it  referred.     The  Bible  was  assumed 


1 6  THE  NEW  PEACE 

to  speak  the  last  word,  not  only  on  Hebrew  his- 
tory and  religion,  but  also  on  the  facts  of  physi- 
cal nature.  Its  interpreters  opposed  the  rising 
scientific  view  whenever  it  collided  with  the  Bibli- 
cal view,  as  they  saw  it,  and  so  won  for  the  re- 
ligion which  they  represented  the  odium  of  an- 
tagonism to  science.  Secondly,  the  current  sys- 
tems of  theology,  which  were  formulated  and 
closed  before  the  rise  of  modern  science,  con- 
tained implications  and  sometimes  explicit  state- 
ments sharply  opposed  to  assured  scientific  re- 
sults. Men  of  science  and  theologians  them- 
selves practically  identified  religion  with  such 
formal  expressions  of  it;  and  here  again  religion 
appeared  to  be  in  conflict  with  science.  Thirdly, 
the  fixed  habit  of  unquestioning  appeal  to  author- 
ity and  to  precedent  was  fostered  and  perpetuated 
by  the  prevailing  system  of  education,  and  this 
education  was  under  religious  control.  When 
independence  spoke,  as  it  did  almost  solely  in 
the  language  of  science,  it  spoke  against  authority 
entrenched  in  religious  sanctions;  and  yet  again 
religion  and  science  were  at  strife.  Lastly,  the 
religious  experience  itself  presupposes  the  exist- 
ence in  human  nature  of  a  feature  which  fails  to 
respond  to  any  of  the  scientific  tests,  and  it  postu- 
lates another  world  beyond  the  sweep  of  the  scien- 
tific  vision.     The   basis    of   religion,    it    is    said, 


INTRODUCTION  17 

science  does  not  know  and  cannot  justify;  and 
once  more  religion  and  science  part  company  with 
averted  faces. 

Now,  it  takes  two  to  make  a  quarrel,  and  in 
this  controversy  born  of  blunders,  in  this  "  battle- 
ground of  darkness  "  where  friends  have  been 
fighting  one  another,  the  responsibility  belongs  to 
both  the  antagonists.  Working  apart,  they  mis- 
understood each  other.  The  theologian  had  no 
more  training  in  science  than  the  inhabitants  of 
Jupiter  who,  according  to  Swedenborg,  do  not 
affect  the  sciences,  calling  them  shades.  The 
man  of  science,  on  his  part,  preoccupied  with  the 
world  of  sense,  lost  interest  in  the  supersensuous 
realm,  then  forgot  it,  then  denied  it.  Conflict 
was  inevitable. 

Simple  and  clear  as  is  the  origin  of  the  con- 
troversy, its  present  status  is  most  complicated 
and  difficult  to  describe.  The  solutions  of  the 
problem  which  have  been  proposed  from  time  to 
time,  while  logically  progressive,  have  not  suc- 
cessively supplanted  one  another  so  as  to  leave 
the  last  in  sole  possession  of  the  field.  One  finds 
them  all  side  by  side  in  practical  vigor  in  the 
world  of  intelligence  to-day.  There  is  the  doc- 
trine of  the  "  double  truth,"  which  holds  science 
and  religion  to  be  equally  true,  though  contra- 
dictory;   they    are    wholly    unrelated.     There    is 


1 8  THE  NEW  PEACE 

supernaturalism,  insisting  that  dogma  cannot  con- 
tradict reason  because  it  is  above  reason  —  peace, 
you  observe,  secured  under  "  a  treaty  of  bound- 
aries." And  rationalism,  the  expression  of  revolt 
from  supernaturalism,  is  still  criticising  the  body 
of  traditional  beliefs,  still  assuming  religion  to  be 
identical  with  its  dogmatic  representation.  Prob- 
ably the  next  thoughtful  man  you  meet  will  be  a 
mystic  who  is  superior  to  the  pressure  of  our 
religious  problem  because  he  is  at  once  assured 
in  his  inner  sense  of  the  higher  realities  and  in- 
different to  ecclesiastical  forms  and  beliefs.  And 
now  and  then  you  will  encounter  the  student  of 
the  science  of  religion,  to  which,  at  any  rate  in 
his  view,  is  committed  the  final  settlement  of  the 
claims  of  science  and  religion. 

The  situation  is  further  complicated  by  the 
varying  practical  attitudes  which  men  have  taken 
towards  the  question.  For  many  minds  it  has  no 
interest  whatever.  Some  do  not  stand  where  the 
streams  of  our  intellectual  life  are  flowing.  Some 
who  do  are  wholly  absorbed  in  the  products  of 
the  mystical  fancy,  in  the  theosophies  of  India, 
or  the  new  psychologies  of  the  sub-conscious  self, 
and  the  threat  of  scientific  materialism  is  too  re- 
mote to  reach  them.  Others  once  keenly  aware 
of  it  have  grown  weary  of  its  long  overdue  proph- 
ecies  and  dropped  it  out  of  mind.      Moreover, 


INTRODUCTION  19 

some  of  the  foremost  of  the  students  of  science 
also  are  indifferent;  they  interpret  the  quieting 
down  of  attack  as  surrender;  they  have  ceased 
to  criticise  the  statements  of  idealism  and  re- 
ligion, and,  in  courteous  and  respectful  estrange- 
ment, devote  themselves  to  their  task  of  strength- 
ening the  claims  of  science  and  widening  the  range 
of  its  authority.  On  the  other  hand,  those  who 
do  feel  concern  in  the  religious  question  have 
made  very  unequal  progress  in  the  discussion  of 
it.  Some  stand  even  now  in  mortal  terror  of 
the  newly  discovered  Darwin  and  his  "  bulldog," 
while  others  have  passed  through  the  evolution 
struggle  and  are  now  engaged  in  the  reconstruc- 
tion of  Christian  dogmatics  from  the  evolutionary 
view-point.  Correspondingly,  not  a  few  men  of 
science  are  urging,  with  a  sort  of  fresh  apostolic 
ardor,  that  physics  and  chemistry  are  the  all- 
sufficient  solvents  of  the  mysteries  of  the  universe, 
that  thinking  and  willing  and  feeling  are  only 
matters  of  varying  molecular  stress;  but  some  of 
their  comrades  in  labor  have  completed  the  cycle 
of  scientific  thought  and  gone  through  the  limita- 
tions of  its  method  to  find  that  nature  is  at  bot- 
tom mental.  In  one  part  of  the  field  the  battle 
waxes  warm,  in  another  hostilities  are  suspended 
under  a  flag  of  truce  and  articles  of  a  formal  rec- 
onciliation  are  being  drawn  up,   in   yet   another 


20  THE  NEW  PEACE 

friends  of  years  take  counsel  of  one  another  and 
marvel  at  the  tragedy  of  the  early  alienation. 

The  difficulty  of  dealing  with  such  a  situation 
is  obvious.  But  another  difficulty  must  be  added. 
In  the  study  of  the  relations  of  science  and  re- 
ligion, we  are  dealing  with  tendencies  and  values, 
with  tone  and  emphasis  and  bearing,  with  impli- 
cations and  general  impressions.  These  value 
judgments  it  is  more  difficult  to  set  forth  than  a 
definite  body  of  teaching  would  be.  Sharpness 
of  outline  and  precision  are  just  the  qualities 
which  they  lack.  The  result  of  the  effort  to 
sketch  them  will  be  more  or  less  under  haze, 
however  much  care  one  may  devote  to  the  delinea- 
tion. Moreover,  the  play  of  the  personal  equa- 
tion, for  which  there  is  large  room,  may  give  to 
the  work  of  one  student  a  color  which  will  not 
blend  kindly  with  the  color  of  another  piece  of 
work  in  the  same  field,  if,  indeed,  there  be  not 
opportunity  for  a  deeper  divergence.  We  ought 
to  be  prepared  for  both  the  indistinctness  and  the 
difference  of  treatment,  and  be  on  guard  against 
exaggerating  the  significance  of  either.  They  be- 
long to  the  subject  itself,  at  least  to  the  stage  of 
development  which  it  has  now  reached.  The  dis- 
cussion, as  we  have  seen,  is  still  under  way.  Pre- 
cise and  authoritative  conclusions  are  yet  to  be 
formulated.     Besides,  material  for  the  argument 


INTRODUCTION  21 

may  be  gathered  at  well-nigh  every  point  in  the 
whole  range  of  human  learning,  both  philosophical 
and  scientific.  So  vast  a  continent  no  man  will 
ever  again  master.  One  may  break  into  its  riches 
here  and  there  and  bear  off  a  pebble  or  two.  One 
may  climb  a  little  hill  and  look  about  one  to  won- 
der and  to  covet.  But  to  be  at  home  in  these  wide 
reaches  of  plain  and  upland  and  cloud-capped 
mountain, —  even  Aristotle,  "  the  master  of  those 
that  know,"  or  Francis  Bacon,  or  Alexander  Hum- 
boldt, would  lose  his  way  and  be  driven  to  seek 
some  one  to  guide  him,  however  much  he  might 
be  helped  by  the  cognate  relation  of  the  branches 
of  knowledge.  A  consistent  and  a  definitive  treat- 
ment of  our  problem,  where  so  much  is  involved, 
is,  I  fear,  many  years  ahead  of  us,  and  must  be 
the  work  of  many  minds  co-operant  each  accord- 
ing to  its  place  and  outlook. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  present  discus- 
sion science  and  religion  are  not  inherently  an- 
tagonistic. And  this  absence  of  antagonism  is 
not  the  result  of  their  occupation  of  distinct 
spheres  which  are  without  contact  or  communica- 
tion. They  are,  on  the  contrary,  bound  together 
in  the  relation  of  positive  friendship.  And  that 
union  is  more  intimate  than  that  of  the  two  planta- 
tions which  came  to  a  neighbor  of  mine  in  the 
division  of  the   ancestral  estate.     There   fell  to 


22  THE  NEW  PEACE 

him  two  tracts  of  land  some  four  hundred  yards 
apart.  But  the  commissioners  apportioned  to  him 
in  addition  a  narrow  strip  of  land  connecting  the 
two  tracts,  so  that  he  might,  as  they  said,  drive 
his  hogs  from  one  to  the  other  without  having 
to  cross  another  man's  property.  Whose  prop- 
erty could  lie  between  the  tract  of  science  and 
the  tract  of  religion?  There  would  be  nobody  to 
claim  it.  No;  the  two  regions  lie  full  alongside. 
They  are,  rather,  continuous,  and  the  line  which 
has  divided  them  is  artificial,  the  creation  of  a 
too  exclusive  specialism.  It  is  like  the  lines 
drawn  by  ignorance  and  prejudice  between  sec- 
tions of  one  great  country,  as  East  and  West, 
North  and  South.  I  shall  be  glad  when  the 
memorials  of  this  fictitious  boundary  retain  only 
an  historic  interest,  like  the  stones  which  once 
marked  Mason  and  Dixon's  Line,  some  of  which 
are  now  preserved  in  a  Baltimore  museum  as  his- 
torical  curiosities. 

Plan  of  the  Lectures 

As  Socrates  and  Phaedrus  lay  on  the  grass  under 
the  plane-tree  outside  the  walls  of  Athens  and 
discussed  an  oration  of  Lysias,  Socrates  remarked, 
as  he  began  a  rival  composition  of  his  own  on  the 
same  theme,  "  On  every  subject  there  is  but  one 
mode  of  beginning  for  those  who  would  deliberate 


INTRODUCTION  23 

well.  They  must  know  what  the  thing  is  on  which 
they  are  deliberating,  or  else  of  necessity  go  alto- 
gether astray."  Let  us  respect  this  counsel  and 
seek  first  of  all  to  establish  a  definition  of  science 
and  a  definition  of  religion,  and  then,  "  with  these 
to  look  back  upon,  proceed  to  consider  "  their  re- 
lations. Accordingly,  the  subjects  of  the  lectures 
will  be, — "What  is  Science?"  "The  Scope  of 
Science"  (involving  function  and  relations), 
"  Science  in  Religion,"  and  "  Religion  in  Science." 


LECTURE  I 
WHAT  IS  SCIENCE? 


Let  thy  studies  be  free  as  thy  thoughts  and  con- 
templations; but  fly  not  upon  the  wings  of  imagina- 
tion; join  sense  unto  reason,  and  experiment  unto 
speculation,  and  so  give  life  unto  embryon  truths, 
and  verities  yet  in  their  chaos.  .  .  .  The  world, 
which  took  but  six  days  to  make,  is  like  to  take 
six  thousand  to  make  out. 
—  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  Christian  Morals,  II. v. 

Go,  my  sons,  sell  your  lands,  your  houses,  your 
garments  and  your  jewelry;  burn  up  your  books. 
On  the  other  hand,  buy  yourselves  stout  shoes,  get 
away  to  the  mountains,  search  the  valleys,  the 
deserts,  the  shores  of  the  sea,  and  the  deepest 
recesses  of  the  earth;  mark  well  the  distinction 
between  animals,  the  differences  among  plants,  the 
various  kinds  of  minerals,  the  properties  and  mode 
of  origin  of  everything  that  exists.  Be  not 
ashamed  to  learn  by  heart  the  astronomy  and 
terrestrial  philosophy  of  the  peasantry.  Lastly, 
purchase  coals,  build  furnaces,  watch  and  experi- 
ment without  wearying.  In  this  way,  and  no 
other,  will  you  arrive  at  a  knowledge  of  things 
and  of  their  properties. 

—  Peter  Severinus,  sixteenth  century. 

Danish  Professor  of  Poetry,  Meteorol- 
ogy and  Medicine.  (Cited  by  Geikie, 
Founders  of  Geology). 


WHAT  IS  SCIENCE? 

OUR  period  is  often  called  the  scientific  age, 
and  yet  in  large  areas  of  the  public  mind  of 
to-day  the  whole  matter  of  science  is  enveloped 
in  cloud.  Misapprehension  of  it  and  suspicion 
were,  perhaps,  to  be  expected  when  it  first  intruded 
itself  among  the  intellectual  pursuits  at  the  dawn 
of  the  modern  era.  Roger  Bacon  and  Bungay, 
who  laid  the  foundations  of  English  science  at 
Oxford,  were,  not  unnaturally,  the  objects  of 
popular  suspicion  and  bore  the  odium  of  prying 
wizards.  The  first  scientific  society  of  which  we 
have  definite  record  was  established  in  Naples  in 
1560  under  the  presidency  of  Baptista  Porta,  and 
bore  the  name  "  Academia  Secretorum  Naturae." 
It  arose  out  of  a  meeting  of  scientific  friends  in 
Porta's  house,  who  called  themselves  with  a  gay 
irony  Otiosi.  The  name  of  the  Academy  was  a 
suspicious  one.  It  suggested  magic  and  the  black 
arts.  The  suspicion  was  contagious  and  spread 
northward  to  Rome.  The  Pope  sent  for  Porta. 
The  Pope  made  a  distinction  between  the  Presi- 
dent and  his  Academy,  whether  on  the  ground  of 
the  demonstrated  cleverness  and  good  intentions 
of  the    President   standing   actually  before   him, 

27 


28  THE  NEW  PEACE 

while  the  Academy,  distant  and  vague,  took  on 
imaginary  terrors,  I  do  not  know.  But  the  Pope 
made  a  distinction:  he  absolved  the  President,  but 
dissolved  the  Academy.  The  founding  of  the 
Royal  Society  about  a  hundred  years  later  is  one 
of  the  landmarks  in  the  progress  of  science,  but 
Addison  and  Steele  make  sport  of  it.1 

Happily  to-day  no  one  anticipates  the  dissolu- 
tion of  Italian,  English,  or  American  scientific 
associations  by  either  ecclesiastical  or  civil  author- 
ity. The  time  for  that  sort  of  impeachment  is 
wholly  passed  away.  But  are  the  wits  who  were 
wont  to  pasture  in  the  scientific  field  all  dead? 
Are  we  quite  sure  that  even  in  this  scientific  age 
there  are  no  survivals  of  the  early  ill  repute  of 
science  when  it  was  fighting  its  way  to  respectabil- 
ity? Is  the  man  of  science,  who  wins  ideas,  alto- 
gether on  the  same  footing  as  the  man  of  busi- 
ness, who  wins  wealth?  Is  he  not  often  the  vic- 
tim of  pen  and  pencil  caricature?  Is  he  never 
regarded  as  a  harmless  sort  of  creature  throwing 
himself  away  after  insoluble  puzzles  or  collect- 
ing useless  facts  very  much  as  little  children  collect 
in  their  play-houses  bright  bits  of  broken  glass  and 
china?  "  One  friend  of  mine,"  says  Browning  in 
the  "  Easter-Day,"— 

1  Tatler,  221,  236. 


MISCONCEPTION  29 

One  friend  of  mine  wears  out  his  eyes, 
Slighting  the  stupid  joys  of  sense, 
In  patient  hope  that,  ten  years  hence, 
"  Somewhat  completer,"  he  may  say, 
"My  list  of  Coleoptera!" 

And,  may  I  ask,  why  all  this  ado  when  a  man  like 
Lord  Kelvin  declares  to  his  associates  that  science 
affirms  a  creative  and  directive  Power?  What  is 
the  significance  of  the  all  but  hysterical  interest 
which  religious  circles  take  when  Wallace,  in  the 
name  of  science,  replaces  man  at  the  centre  of 
cosmic  relations?  Is  it  not  that  such  declarations 
in  favor  of  religion  by  men  of  mark  in  science  are 
as  unexpected  as  they  are  comforting?  And  does 
not  science  even  yet  meet  that  "  troublesome  and 
difficult  opponent  " — "  a  blind  and  immoderate 
zeal  for  religion  " —  which  Bacon  recognized  in 
every  age  from  the  ancient  Greeks  downward? 
Does  not  one  hear  now  and  then  covert  or  open 
detraction  of  science  and  men  of  science  on  the 
part  of  divines,  who,  in  the  words  of  the  Novum 
Organum,  have  mingled  with  the  substance  of  re- 
ligion "  an  undue  proportion  of  the  contentious 
and  thorny  philosophy  of  Aristotle  "  ? 

If  we  pass  into  the  realm  of  letters,  we  may 
catch  the  same  note  of  prejudice  and  distrust. 
Here  is  Mr.  John  Morley  approving  the  view  of 
Dr.  Thomas  Arnold:     "  Rather  than  have  phys- 


3o  THE  NEW  PEACE 

ical  science  the  principal  thing  in  my  son's  mind, 
I  would  gladly  have  him  think  that  the  sun  went 
round  the  earth,  and  that  the  stars  were  so  many 
spangles  set  in  the  bright  blue  firmament."  A 
few  months  ago  a  writer  of  distinction,  in  an  Eng- 
lish review,  remarked  contemptuously,  "  It's  all 
about  '  science  ' —  and  therefore  does  not  concern 
me  " ;  and  he  went  on  to  wonder  whether  there 
were  many  men  who  shared  his  feeling,  which, 
he  said,  often  took  the  form  of  a  dread,  almost 
a  terror. 

Perhaps  the  suspicion-tinged  mist  through  which 
many  persons  look  at  science  has  drifted  over  the 
popular  mind  out  of  the  fields  of  science  itself. 
Its  technical  phraseology,  sometimes  foolishly 
paraded,  is  both  diverting  and  unintelligible,  In 
an  old  Irish  tale  a  bard  who  had  spoken  before 
the  King  and  his  warriors  is  warmly  praised,  be- 
cause neither  the  King  nor  any  other  could  under- 
stand him,  "  so  great  was  his  high,  noble,  beauti- 
ful obscurity."  The  gift  of  sane  and  clear  ex- 
position is  no  more  common  on  the  scientific  plat- 
form than  on  the  theological.  Besides,  certain 
men,  invoking  the  certitude  of  physical  science, 
have  been  rudely  inconsiderate  of  the  religious 
sentiment,  which,  on  its  part,  instead  of  going  to 
pieces  under  the  violence  of  the  attack,  merely 
withdrew  within  itself,   reflecting  what  a  dread- 


MISCONCEPTION  31 

ful  thing  this  science  must  be!  All  this  may  be 
admitted,  but  whatever  extenuation  of  this  popular 
attitude  may  have  been  supplied  by  the  eccentricity, 
the  oracular  airs,  the  cloistral  seclusion,  or  the 
materialism  of  individual  men  of  science,  it  is  in 
reality  without  foundation.  To  see  that  it  is  so, 
we  have  only  to  lift  our  thought  from  men  to 
their  work,  and  from  the  details  of  observation 
and  experiment  to  the  general  principles  which 
they  have  yielded.  Accordingly,  let  us  address 
ourselves  to  the  search  for  the  definition  of  science. 
If  we  can  find  it,  it  may  protect  us  against  the 
contagion  of  the  popular  feeling  to  which  I  have 
referred,  and  also  against  certain  errors  of  popu- 
lar thinking.  For  many  droll  and  extravagant 
notions  about  science  are  still  current  even  among 
those  who  have  the  reputation  of  general  intel- 
ligence. People  still  experience  Alexander  Pope's 
difficulty  of  "  holding  the  eel  of  science  by  the 
tail."  The  subject-matter  of  science  is  thought 
to  lie  apart  in  a  sort  of  mystical  world.  The 
method  of  science  is  conceived  of  as  a  sort  of  one- 
eyed  hunting  in  obscure  corners  and  dragging  out 
into  the  light  curious  little  odds  and  ends  which 
would  perhaps  have  been  as  well  left  in  the  dark- 
ness. The  results  of  science  excite  a  distant  and 
dubious  wonder  not  very  unlike  that  awakened 
by  legerdemain.     The  scientific  investigator  him- 


32  THE  NEW  PEACE 

self  is  a  modern  version  of  the  magician  Doctor 
Faustus,  who  went  about  with  the  devil  as  a  com- 
panion in  the  shape  of  a  dog,  and  who,  according 
to  an  old  Leipzig  chronicle,  was  able  on  occasion 
to  ride  out  of  a  cellar  on  a  bewitched  barrel  of 
wine. 

On  the  contrary,  as  I  need  not  remind  you, 
science  demands  of  her  votaries  no  mystical  or 
magic  powers.  Her  achievements  have  been 
made  neither  by  accident,  nor  by  a  series  of  con- 
juring tricks,  nor  yet  with  the  co-operation  of  evil 
spirits.  The  noble  structure  which  she  has  reared 
in  this  modern  day  is  the  very  shelter  and  dwelling 
of  our  life,  and  it  is  time  all  men  recognized  her 
and  felt  at  home  in  her  gracious  presence.  For, 
I  protest,  seen  near  at  hand,  she  is  all  kindness 
and  simplicity.  And  they  will  so  recognize  her  as 
soon  as  the  demand  of  science  for  a  place  in  every 
stage  of  the  educational  process  is  made  good. 

Definition 

Of  course,  science  is  knowledge,  but  it  is  not 
true  that  every  form  of  knowledge  is  science. 
Here  is  art,  for  example,  in  the  industrial  and  in 
the  aesthetic  sense.  Art  rests  on  a  foundation  of 
knowledge,  but  its  aim  is  not  truth,  but  utility  or 
beauty.  Knowledge  in  science  is  the  end,  in  art 
only    the    means    to    an    end.     Accordingly,    the 


DEFINITION  33 

knowledge  with  which  art  is  concerned  need  be  no 
fuller  and  no  more  exact  than  suffices  for  the 
matter  in  hand,  whereas  science  is  content  with 
nothing  short  of  the  whole  truth.  Again,  science 
is  not  quite  synonymous  with  philosophy,  although 
truth  is  the  aim  of  both.  In  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries  philosophy  was  often  used  as 
the  equivalent  of  what  we  now  mean  by  science, 
and  even  in  our  own  time  the  science  of  physics  has 
been  called  natural  philosophy.  But  present  usage 
restricts  the  term  philosophy  to  metaphysics,  which 
a  French  historian,  I  think  profanely,  defined  as 
the  art  of  confounding  oneself  methodically. 
Science  discovers  the  orderly  sequence  of  events 
in  nature;  philosophy  asks  why  this  sequence 
rather  than  another?  Why  any  sequence? 
Science  looks  abroad  and  collates;  philosophy 
looks  within  and  thinks.  Science  experiments, 
testing  its  theory  by  the  course  of  events  under 
artificial  and  controllable  conditions;  philosophy 
reflects,  testing  its  theory  by  seeking  its  place  in 
a  logical  system.  And  yet  science  is  not  all  ob- 
serving and  registering.  Its  method  demands  the 
use  of  the  rational  powers,  and  abstract  concep- 
tions are  an  important  part  of  the  equipment,  as 
they  are  the  aim,  of  its  investigation.  Science 
readily  runs  to  philosophy.  Set  here  in  the  midst 
of  mystery,  we   are   smitten  with  an  irresistible 


34  THE  NEW  PEACE 

curiosity  and  must  have  an  explanation.  The 
search  for  it  begins  early,  as  early  in  fact  as  three 
years  of  age.  The  onset  of  "  the  questioning 
mania"  is  signalized  by  the  question  "What?" 
11  How?  "  treads  on  the  heels  of  "  What?  "  and 
"Why?"  on  the  heels  of  "How?"  A  meta- 
physician of  three  summers  stated  this  problem: 
"  If  I  had  gone  up  stairs,  could  God  make  it  that 
I  hadn't?  "  A  practical  American  philosopher  of 
eight  asked,  "  Why  don't  God  kill  the  devil,  and 
then  there  would  be  no  more  wickedness  in  the 
world?  "  And  another,  "  If  God  wanted  me  to 
be  good,  and  I  wouldn't,  which  would  win?" 
This  truth-hunger  is  one  of  the  badges  of  our 
nobility.  It  grows  upon  its  proper  food,  which, 
like  Dante's  bread  of  angels,  sustains  but  never 
sates;  so  that,  diversion  and  preoccupation  apart, 
it  subsides  only  in  the  general  decay  of  old  age. 
What  wonder,  then,  that  the  men  on  the  advance 
line  of  scientific  inquiry  drop  so  easily  into  philoso- 
phy, passing  unconsciously  from  the  cognitive  pro- 
cess and  the  investigation  of  phenomenal  reality 
over  into  speculation  about  the  ultimate  reality, 
which  is  the  special  note  of  philosophy. 

There  is  yet  another  body  of  knowledge  with 
which  science  is  hardly  to  be  identified.  I  refer 
to  theology.  Professor  Briggs  has  lately  defined 
theology,  in  its  comprehensive  and  proper  use,  as 


DEFINITION  35 

the  study  of  God  and  of  all  things  in  their  rela- 
tions to  Him.  And  he  insists  that  theology  is  and 
must  ever  be  the  queen  of  studies,  for  all  other 
studies  have  to  do  with  particular  provinces  of  the 
realm  of  truth,  whereas  theology  covers  the  en- 
tire realm.2  Now,  science  does  not  directly  and 
explicitly  make  God  the  subject  of  investigation, 
but  the  "  all  things "  which  Professor  Briggs 
stakes  out  here  as  the  claim  of  theology  are  ex- 
actly the  ground  where  science  is  busying  itself. 
Is  science  a  squatter  on  the  theological  domain? 
If  their  spheres  are  so  nearly  coterminous,  wherein 
lies  the  difference  between  theology  and  science? 
There  is,  first,  let  me  say,  the  difference  of  em- 
phasis. Theology  is  concerned  with  things  not 
on  their  own  account,  but  only  because  of  their 
relation  to  God.  Science  is  concerned  with  things 
for  their  own  sake,  and  only  thinks  of  their  rela- 
tion to  God  when,  rising  into  philosophy,  it  seeks 
their  ultimate  explanation.  There  is,  secondly, 
the  difference  of  the  means  of  knowledge  which 
they  employ, —  reason  and  the  five  senses  in 
science,  reason  and  the  spiritual  sense  in  theology. 
Nevertheless,  from  one  point  of  view  they  appear 
to  coincide.  Theology  is  not  religion,  as  science 
is  not  nature.  The  religious  experience  is  one 
thing;  the  explanation  of  it  —  theology  in  the  re- 

2  American  Journ.  of  Theology,  July,  1904. 


3  6  THE  NEW  PEACE 

stricted  sense  —  is  another.  But  the  religious  ex- 
perience is  a  fact  of  nature,  and  as  such  it  is  clearly 
open  to  scientific  investigation.  When,  there- 
fore, science  deals  with  this  section  of  the  world 
of  nature,  it  coalesces  with  theology,  the  two  dis- 
ciplines having  the  same  relation  to  religion. 

The  modicum  of  knowledge  which  is  mixed 
with  varying  proportions  of  error  or  fancy  in  num- 
erous nostrums,  fads,  and  cults  afloat  to-day  on  the 
stream  of  printer's  ink,  must,  like  the  crane  found 
among  the  farmer's  geese,  take  the  consequence 
of  its  unfortunate  alliance.  It  need  not  detain 
us  beyond  this  passing  reference.  The  well-in- 
formed recognize  the  combination  as  pseudo- 
science,  for  all  its  careful  conning  of  scientific 
phrases  and  its  specious  offerings  upon  the  altar  of 
science. 

A  final  limitation  of  the  word  knowledge  in 
our  definition  of  science  as  knowledge,  must  be 
made.  And  by  this  time  you  are  doubtless  as- 
sured of  the  truth  of  Rousseau's  paradox,  that 
definitions  might  be  good,  if  words  were  not  used 
in  making  them.  The  fund  of  what  may  be  called 
common  knowledge  is  large  and  of  the  highest 
importance.  It  suffices  for  the  practical  conduct 
of  life  amidst  the  intricate  relations  of  the  external 
world.  Moreover,  the  sphere,  the  aim,  and  the 
method  of  common  knowledge  are  essentially  the 


DEFINITION  37 

same  as  those  of  scientific  knowledge.  And  yet 
it  is  not  quite  the  same  as  scientific  knowledge. 
To  rise  to  that  level  it  requires  to  add  two  quali- 
ties,—  precision  and  co-ordination.  We  con- 
clude, therefore,  with  Herbert  Spencer,  that 
science  is  "  simply  a  higher  development  of  com- 
mon knowledge,"  that  is  to  say,  common  knowl- 
edge made  precise  and  full  and  systematic.  Let 
me  illustrate.  The  world  in  which  we  live  is 
thronged  with  animals  of  many  different  kinds. 
That  fact  is  an  item  of  common  knowledge.  But 
the  demands  of  scientific  knowledge  are  not  met 
by  a  statement  so  indefinite.  It  requires  the  exact 
number  of  the  different  kinds  of  animals,  together 
with  the  grouping  of  them  according  to  their 
similarities  and  dissimilarities.  And  so  all  known 
forms  are  described  in  detail,  stationed  in  a  sys- 
tem, and  catalogued.  When  a  new  one  is  dis- 
covered, whether  a  microscopic  dweller  in  the 
slime  of  a  stagnant  pool  or  a  giraffe  in  central 
Africa,  the  trumpets  of  the  science  journals  are 
blown,  and  in  full  view  of  the  scientific  world  the 
new-found  thing  is  described  and  christened  amid 
appropriate  ceremonies  and  congratulations  of  the 
now  rare  and  fortunate  discoverer.  In  the  hands 
of  the  man  of  science,  the  average  man's  statement, 
many  animals  of  many  kinds,  is  expanded  into 
Zoology.     Take    another    illustration.     A    little 


3  8  THE  NEW  PEACE 

girl  asked,  "  How  do  my  thoughts  get  from  my 
brain  to  my  mouth,  and  how  does  my  spirit  make 
my  legs  walk?"  Now,  ordinary  knowledge  gets 
but  a  little  way  beyond  the  simple  facts  which 
the  child  wished  explained.  But  science  answers 
the  question  —  not  completely,  it  must  be  owned 
—  with  Histology,   Physiology,  and   Psychology. 

The  Scientific  Method 

So  much  has  been  said  about  the  scientific 
method,  there  is  no  wonder  that  it  is  believed  to  be 
unique  and  magical  and  one  of  the  inventions  of  the 
century  which  applied  it  with  such  brilliant  results. 
In  reality,  neither  the  nineteenth  nor  the  eighteenth 
century  can  take  the  credit  of  inventing  this  fruit- 
ful method.  Nor  yet  did  it  originate  in  the 
Renascence,  as  some  suppose.  Descartes'  "  Dis- 
course on  Method,"  important  as  it  is  in  the  his- 
tory of  modern  thinking,  did  not  show  for  the  first 
time  the  value  of  deduction  and  induction  as  means 
of  knowledge.  And  we  may  question  the  legit- 
imacy of  the  title  of  Francis  Bacon's  great  work. 
The  inductive  method  which  it  elaborated  was 
really  not  a  "  new  instrument,"  and  his  influence 
upon  scientific  progress  has  been  much  exagger- 
ated. Professor  Huxley  is  doubtless  correct 
when  he  says  that  men  like  Galileo  and  Harvey 
and  Newton  would  have  done  their  work  just  as 


METHOD  39 

well  if  neither  Bacon  nor  Descartes  had  ever  pro- 
pounded their  views  respecting  the  method  of 
scientific  investigation.  Certainly  Aristotle,  who 
antedated  them  nearly  two  millenniums,  was  in  no 
wise  indebted  to  their  expositions,  and  his  work, 
especially  in  the  observational  sciences,  in  spite  of 
error  and  fancies  here  and  there,  clearly  bears 
the  distinctive  mark  of  the  scientific  method.  And 
Archimedes  is  the  originator  of  the  science  of 
Mechanics.  Even  beyond  Aristotle  and  Archi- 
medes it  may  be  traced  in  the  Greek  philosophers 
of  the  fifth  and  sixth  centuries  B.C.,  who  displaced 
the  current  theological  view  with  the  rational 
view  of  natural  phenomena.  We  may  go  still 
farther  and  say  that  the  outlines  of  modern 
science  were  rudely  sketched  by  primitive  man 
when  he  brought  his  reason  face  to  face  with 
nature.  The  animal  lore  out  of  which  totemism 
springs  is  a  primitive  zoology;  and  when  the  Lapp 
transfers  the  domestic  relations  of  father,  mother, 
and  child  to  different  kinds  of  stones,  he  is  merely 
classifying  them  much  as  a  modern  geologist 
would  do  in  more  prosaic  terms. 

In  reality  the  method  of  science  is  only  the 
method  of  common  sense  applied  with  care.  It  is 
the  method  which  the  man  of  business  habitually 
uses  in  the  humblest  matters  with  more  or  less 
carelessness.     The  man  of  science  is  only  more 


4o  THE  NEW  PEACE 

patient,  more  scrupulous,  more  exact.  An  illiter- 
ate but  strong-minded  old  woman  of  the  North 
Carolina  mountains  once  gave  me  a  graphic  de- 
scription of  a  trip  which  she  made  in  her  girlhood 
down  to  Fayetteville  with  her  father,  who  was 
"  wagoning  "  to  that  emporium  of  the  old  days. 
She  told  how  the  sand  of  that  low  country  cut  off 
her  stockings  at  the  level  of  her  shoe-tops,  and 
how,  as  she  stooped  to  examine  the  wheels  of  the 
first  railway  train  she  ever  saw,  some  one  said, 
"  That  thing  will  cut  your  head  off  1  "  whereupon 
she  fled  away  so  fast  and  so  far  that  her  father, 
as  she  said,  "  wouldn't  never  'a  found  me,  ef  it 
hadn't  'a  been  for  the  prints  of  the  nailheads  in 
my  shoe  bottoms !  "  The  mental  process  by 
which  that  mountain  wagoner  found  his  fright- 
ened child  was  identical  with  that  by  which  Cuvier, 
Hugh  Miller,  and  Marsh  have  recovered  the  lost 
life  of  the  ancient  world  from  footprints  and  frag- 
ments of  bone.  The  universal  method  of  all 
knowledge  of  material  things  is,  in  brief,  observa- 
tion, inference,  verification.  I  may  illustrate  it 
by  a  comparatively  recent  research  upon  the  cause 
of  a  curious  and  fatal  disorder  of  central  Africa. 
It  is  known  as  "  sleeping  sickness  "  from  its  chief 
symptom.  In  the  district  of  Uganda  alone  it 
killed  100,000  of  the  population  in  two  years. 
Now,  the  learned  author  of  the  "  Anatomy  of 


METHOD  41 

Melancholy/'  not  less  complacently  than  the  na- 
tive medicine-men,  would  most  probably  have  re- 
ferred the  malady  to  the  devil  operating  through 
"  such  as  command  him  in  show  at  least,  as  con- 
jurors and  magicians,  or  such  as  are  commanded, 
as  witches."  Not  so  Col.  David  Bruce,  who 
spent  some  five  months  in  Uganda  in  1903. 
Eight  years  before  he  had  shown  the  tsetze-fly 
disease  of  South  Africa  to  be  due  to  the  presence 
in  the  blood  of  horses  and  cattle  of  an  animal 
parasite,  Trypanosoma,  carried  by  the  bite  of  the 
tsetze-fly.  On  his  arrival  in  Uganda  he  was  told 
that  this  parasite  had  been  seen  in  the  cerebro- 
spinal fluid  of  a  certain  victim  of  the  sleeping  sick- 
ness. This  observation  he  confirmed  and  ex- 
tended. He  found  the  parasite  in  the  blood  of 
28  per  cent,  of  the  population  of  the  infected  re- 
gion and  in  the  cerebro-spinal  fluid  of  every  vic- 
tim of  the  disease.  It  was  absent,  moreover, 
from  this  fluid  in  every  case  not  affected  by  the 
disease.  These  observations  prompted  an  infer- 
ence, namely,  that  this  parasite  is  the  cause  of 
sleeping  sickness  after  it  passes  from  the  blood  into 
the  cerebro-spinal  fluid.  His  observations  upon 
the  closely  related  parasite  in  tsetze-fly  disease  in 
1895  naturally  suggested  the  added  inference  that 
the  parasite  is  transported  from  patient  to  patient 
by  the  tsetze-fly.    The  next  step  in  the  research  was 


42  THE  NEW  PEACE 

to  verify  the  inference.  In  the  first  place,  he  dis- 
covered a  species  of  this  fly,  and  found  that  the 
range  of  its  distribution  corresponded  precisely 
with  the  distribution  of  the  disease  and  where  the 
fly  did  not  occur  the  disease  did  not  occur.  In  the 
second  place,  after  finding  a  certain  species  of 
monkey  to  be  susceptible  to  the  disease,  he  caused 
the  flies  which  had  bitten  infected  negroes  to  bite 
monkeys,  which  invariably  died  with  the  char- 
acteristic symptoms  of  sleeping  sickness  and 
showed  the  parasite  in  the  cerebro-spinal  fluid. 
And  so  the  inference  which  observation  suggested 
was  verified  by  experiment,  and  the  real  cause  of 
the  disease  was  discovered. 

Results 

If,  now,  the  method  of  science  is  everywhere 
one  and  invariable,  why,  it  may  be  asked,  was  it  so 
comparatively  barren,  say,  in  the  sixteenth  century, 
and  so  exuberantly  fruitful  in  the  nineteenth?  To 
present  the  contrast  in  concrete  form,  what  is  the 
difference  between  the  work  of  Paracelsus  in 
physiological  chemistry  and  that  of  Claude  Bern- 
ard? The  difference  lay  in  the  relative  emphasis 
of  the  several  factors  of  the  scientific  method 
in  the  two  cases.  Inference  and  hypothesis  are 
essential  steps  in  an  investigation,  but  they  are 
steps  only  —  steps  between  observation  and  ex- 


RESULTS  43 

periment.  In  Paracelsus  hypothesis  was  supreme, 
in  Bernard  the  test  of  experiment.  And  the 
period  covered  by  Bernard's  activity  in  physiologi- 
cal research  coincides  roughly  with  that  of  the  most 
marked  and  rapid  scientific  progress  which  history 
has  to  show.  If,  as  has  been  lately  suggested,  the 
scientific  credit  of  an  age  is  to  be  determined  by 
dividing  the  mean  truthfulness  of  its  work  by  its 
opportunities  of  reaching  the  truth,  the  Victorian 
age  does  not,  perhaps,  so  far  outrank  its  pred- 
ecessors. But  when  we  recall  the  fact  that  Vic- 
torian science  itself  largely  created  the  means  and 
the  opportunities  of  its  advancement,  it  distances 
Greeks,  Arabs,  and  the  scholars  of  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries  not  only  in  the  totality 
of  its  permanent  acquisitions,  but  also  in  the 
scientific  credit  which  is  its  due.  In  fact,  we  seem 
to  be  justified  in  setting  this  brief  period  of,  say, 
seventy-five  years  over  against  all  preceding  periods 
combined.  The  outburst  of  intellectual  energy 
which  distinguished  the  fourth  decade  of  the  last 
century,  fortunately  for  science,  was  not  attracted 
by  the  cold  beauties  of  a  revived  classicalism,  nor 
yet  by  the  flippant  and  negative  philosophizing  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  It  overflowed  the  limiting 
traditions  of  its  origin  and  cut  new  channels  for 
itself.  It  seems  to  have  divined  that  Nature  in 
the  large  sense  is  the  test  of  all  things.     With  a 


44  THE  NEW  PEACE 

charmed  surprise  it  discovered  that  the  natural  is 
the  true  and  the  beautiful  as  well,  for  the  beauti- 
ful is  only  the  splendor  of  the  true,  as  Plato  said; 
and  for  both  truth  and  beauty  it  made  its  appeal 
directly  to  Nature.  It  set  no  boundaries  to  its 
exploring  zeal.  It  pursued  the  truth  of  which  it 
was  enamored  into  every  nook  of  the  expanding 
universe,  and  did  not  hesitate  at  the  threshold  of 
that  larger  universe,  the  mind  of  man.  When 
Mungo  Park  asked  the  Arabs  what  became  of  the 
sun  at  nightfall,  they  replied  that  the  question  was 
beyond  human  investigation.  For  this  alert  nine- 
teenth century  intelligence,  which  had  found  its 
mission  and  its  method,  no  phenomenon  was  be- 
yond investigation,  no  tradition  was  unchallenged. 
The  sense  of  mystery  attracted  it  like  the  impalpa- 
ble drawings  of  a  hidden  magnet.  A  mystery, 
said  Sir  William  Crookes,  is  a  thing  to  be  solved. 
The  record  of  discovery  which  followed  is  un- 
matched in  all  history  since  the  first  naive  ques- 
tioning of  Nature  in  the  childhood  of  the  race.  It 
includes  the  molecular  constitution  of  matter,  the 
conservation  of  energy,  the  cell  structure  of  ani- 
mals and  plants,  embryology,  the  establishment  of 
the  doctrine  of  evolution,  spectrum  analysis  and 
its  application  to  celestial  physics,  the  antiquity  of 
man  and  the  earth,  the  application  of  electricity 
to  communication,  lighting,  machinery,  therapeu- 


RESULTS  45 

tics,  and  chemical  research,  the  railway  and  steam- 
ship, photography  and  the  phonograph,  anaesthet- 
ics, antiseptic  surgery,  the  germ  theory  of  disease 
and  sanitation,  the  Roentgen-rays,  the  electrical 
atom,  electrical  waves,  and  radioactivity. 

It  will  be  seen  that,  with  the  exception  of  gravi- 
tation and  the  bare  beginnings  of  physics,  as- 
tronomy, chemistry,  and  the  biological  sciences, 
these  generalizations  embrace  practically  the  sum 
total  of  our  present  knowledge  of  Nature. 
They  are  inductions  from  innumerable  observa- 
tions and  verifications.  They  register  and  reward 
years  of  toil  and  waiting  on  the  part  of  an  army 
of  self-devoted  and  widely  scattered  workers.  In 
all  its  struggle  upward  out  of  savagery  humanity 
presents  no  finer  spectacle  than  in  scaling  the  sum- 
mits of  nineteenth  century  science.  Every  fact 
won,  it  held  to  be  a  great  fact.  It  saw  in  every 
discovery  both  acquisition  and  opportunity,  and  in 
spite  of  the  taunts  of  the  trivial  and  the  odium  of 
the  serious,  undaunted  in  the  presence  of  impossi- 
bilities, baffled  and  wounded,  but  still  ardent  and 
courageous,  sustained  by  faith  in  the  intelligibility 
of  the  universe,  it  pressed  persistently  up  to  where 
its  goal  of  Truth  gleamed  on  the  heights.  The 
ignorant  or  the  malicious  detractor  may  cry  "  de- 
pravity and  materialism !  "  till  the  stars  die  out  of 
the  sky,  and  to  the  end  this  brilliant  page  of  its 


46  THE  NEW  PEACE 

history  will  protest  in  every  line  of  it  that  human 
nature  is  not  all  mud,  so  long  as  such  consecration 
to  a  lofty  ideal  remains  possible  to  it. 

It  was  inevitable  that  an  expansion  of  natural 
knowledge  so  great  and,  I  was  about  to  say,  so 
sudden,  should  give  a  species  of  electric  shock  to 
human  life,  thrilling  it  from  its  central  deeps  out 
to  its  thinnest  fringes.  It  was  revolutionary.  It 
refashioned  the  external  modes  of  life  and  made 
imperative  the  revision  and  reorganization  of  ex- 
isting opinions.  It  put  a  new  expression  in  the 
face  of  Nature  and  our  entire  physical  and  ra- 
tional life  now  wears  a  new  aspect  and  complexion. 


LECTURE  II 
THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 


The  experimental  sciences  had  investigated  the 
connection  of  phenomena;  they  showed  how  many 
and  what  kind  of  links  constitute  the  chain  of 
events  which  connects  any  cause  with  its  final  effect; 
but  what  it  is  that  holds  together  any  two  contigu- 
ous links  escaped  them;  they  told  neither  what 
things  are  in  themselves,  nor  in  what  consists  that 
action  between  them  by  which  alone  the  condi- 
tion of  one  can  become  the  cause  of  a  change  in 
the  condition  of  another. 

—  Lotze,  Microcosmus,  II,  346. 

The  function  of  physical  science  is  seen  to  be 
much  more  modest  than  was  at  one  time  supposed. 
We  no  longer  hope  by  levers  and  screws  to  pluck 
out  the  heart  of  the  mystery  of  the  universe.  .  .  . 
We  have  given  up  the  notion  of  causation  except 
as  a  convenient  phrase;  what  were  once  called  laws 
of  Nature  are  now  simply  rules  by  which  we  can 
tell  more  or  less  accurately  what  will  be  the  conse- 
quence of  a  given  state  of  things. 

—  Professor  Horace  Lamb. 

Presidential  Address  before  the  Sec- 
tion of  Mathematics  and  Physics  of 
British  Association  for  the  Advance- 
ment of  Science,  1904.  Nature,  Aug. 
18,  1904. 


THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 

ALLUSION  has  been  made  to  the  view  that 
science  and  religion  occupy  distinct  and  un- 
related spheres  and  cannot,  therefore,  collide. 
Honorable  names  are  associated  with  it,  and  up 
to  the  present  time  no  conception  has  been  quite  as 
serviceable  in  quieting  the  fears  with  which  relig- 
ious minds  have  watched  the  steady  progress  of 
science.  Dr.  Martineau  among  philosophers  em- 
ployed it  with  great  eloquence,  and  George 
Romanes  among  scientists  consoled  his  troubled 
spirit  in  his  last  hours  with  the  independent  and 
authoritative  witness  of  the  moral  faculties. 

Is  this  the  true  view?  Can  we  be  permanently 
content  with  marking  off  sharply  from  each  other 
these  two  spheres  of  superlative  human  interest? 
Will  the  formal  boundary  established  between 
these  provinces  remain  inviolable,  and,  while  it 
prevents  conflict,  prevent  also  the  reciprocity  of 
friendly  influence?  When  the  German  bride  of 
the  French  prince,  in  her  progress  to  Paris, 
reached  the  historic  boundary  of  the  Rhine,  she 
entered  a  pavilion  on  an  island  in  the  middle  of 
the  stream  and  exchanged  all  her  German  attire 
for  an  outfit  brought  from  Paris.     Are  there  not 

49 


5o  THE  NEW  PEACE 

signs  that  something  like  this  is  happening  where 
the  religious  frontier  meets  the  scientific?  —  the 
maintenance  of  separateness  with  all  the  "  stiff 
buckram  "  of  official  ceremonial,  and  at  the  same 
time  the  passing  to  and  fro  of  the  most  precious 
commerce  of  the  realms? 

This  question  of  spheres  is  an  important  one, 
and  in  this  lecture  we  shall  seek  to  settle  it  so  far 
as  the  scope  and  function  of  science  are  involved. 
Indeed,  our  definition  of  science  is  incomplete  with- 
out such  a  discussion. 

In  September,  1904,  there  met  in  St.  Louis  the 
International  Congress  of  Arts  and  Science. 
Leading  scientists  of  many  nationalities  partici- 
pated. The  central  purpose  of  the  Congress  was 
the  unification  of  knowledge.  The  general  prin- 
ciples which  underlie  and  connect  all  the  sciences 
were  set  forth,  together  with  their  historical  de- 
velopment and  present  problems.  The  classifica- 
tion of  the  sciences  adopted  by  the  Congress  is 
serviceable  for  our  present  purpose.  Seven  great 
divisions  are  recognized:  Normative  Science,  in- 
cluding philosophy  and  mathematics;  Historical 
Science,  including  political,  linguistic,  and  religious 
history;  Physical  Science,  with  the  departments  of 
physics,  chemistry,  astronomy,  sciences  of  the 
earth,  biology,  and  anthropology;  Mental  Science, 
of  which  sociology  is  a  department;  the  Utilitarian 


SCOPE  51 

Sciences,  as  medicine  and  technology;  with  two 
final  divisions, —  Social  Regulations  and  Social 
Culture. 

Such  a  scheme  represents  the  scope  of  science  as 
it  is  conceived  to-day  by  those  who  have  right  to 
speak  in  its  name.  If  not  side  by  side,  yet  within 
that  scope  lie  subjects  so  diverse  as  crystals  and 
metaphysics,  anatomy  and  psychology,  ether  and 
ethics,  politics  and  religion,  electrical  engineering 
and  ghosts.  There  may  have  been  more  things 
in  heaven  and  earth  than  Horatio's  philosophy 
dreamt  of  in  the  state  of  Denmark  seven  hundred 
years  ago.  But  in  the  presence  of  such  an  array 
as  this,  one  may  question  the  truth  of  the  thought- 
ful prince's  remark  when  it  is  applied  to  the  pres- 
ent time.  For  wherever  there  is  an  object  to  be 
described  or  an  event  to  be  recorded  —  whether 
a  world  naming  in  the  stellar  depths,  or  an  electron 
scintillating  in  a  vacuum  tube;  the  migration  of  a 
sun  system  or  of  a  flock  of  snow-birds,  under  an 
imperious  call  from  afar  —  a  vibration  shooting 
along  the  old  earth's  granite  ribs  or  a  tense  thread 
of  nerve;  the  heaving  of  the  wave  to  meet  the 
moon,  a  cave  plant's  struggle  for  the  light,  or  a 
soul's  passion  to  lie  "  breast  to  breast  with  God  " 
—  wherever  a  fact  waits  for  inquiry,  wherever  the 
search  for  truth  is  possible,  there  lies  the  sphere  of 
science,  not  its  sphere  of  influence  merely,  but  its 


52  THE  NEW  PEACE 

own  proper  territory,  the  field  of  its  labor. 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  a  line  runs  through  the 
midst  of  these  varied  facts,  separating  them  into 
two  classes, —  things  and  thoughts,  outside  facts 
and  inside  facts.  Now,  it  must  be  remembered 
that  our  classifications  are  simply  intellectual 
labor-saving  devices  and  that  every  now  and  then 
they  will  not  work.  Nature  is  not  over-careful 
to  conform  to  our  mode  of  conceiving  her,  and 
sometimes  advances  a  phase  of  her  manifold  ac- 
tivity or  a  product  of  her  boundless  fertility  to 
throw  our  systems  into  confusion.  These  things 
and  thoughts,  deeply  divergent  as  they  appear  to 
be,  might,  if  we  went  deeper  still,  be  found  to 
blend  in  a  common  substratum,  as  coral  islands 
join  hands  beneath  the  sea.  But  in  any  case,  it 
will  be  convenient  to  think  of  them  now  apart  from 
each  other. 

i.  Outside  Facts.  The  objects  and  activities  of 
the  physical  universe  inorganic  and  organic  supply 
the  material  of  scientific  inquiry  as  it  is  usually  dis- 
tinguished from  other  forms  of  inquiry.  The 
theologian  and  the  philosopher  may  delve  in  other 
regions  for  the  truth  they  seek,  but  the  man  of 
science,  while  not  confined,  as  we  shall  see,  to  the 
external  world  of  the  senses,  has  yet  occupied  him- 
self mainly  with  it;  so  much  so  that,  in  the  view  of 
many,  he  is  in  danger  of  losing  credit  in  proportion 


OUTSIDE  FACTS  53 

to  the  range  he  allows  himself  beyond  these  con- 
fines. If,  on  the  other  hand,  he  keep  discreetly 
within  sensuous  bounds,  he  is  able,  only  with  the 
greatest  difficulty,  to  avoid  the  opprobrium  of  low- 
browed materialism.  In  the  study  of  material 
objects  the  scientist  cannot  be  content  with  the 
knowledge  of  form  and  structure,  but  must  push 
his  inquiry  into  questions  of  origin  and  relations, 
the  energies  which  play  upon  them  and  issue  from 
them.  Nor  does  he  pause  when  these  questions 
are  answered.  He  must  know  cause  and  essence 
so  far  as  they  are  accessible  to  human  faculties. 
For  accumulated  facts,  as  we  have  seen,  are  not 
science.  They  require  rational  treatment.  The 
body  of  scientific  truth  is,  accordingly,  the  achieve- 
ment of  observation  and  reason  in  co-operation. 
As  one  stands  before  the  enlarging  mass  of  facts 
which  are  yet  unrelated  in  a  generalized  interpre- 
tation, one  feels  inclined  to  ask  whether  it  is  worth 
while  to  add  with  infinite  labor  sand  grain  to  sand 
grain  for  the  simple  purpose  of  having  a  big  heap 
of  sand  rather  than  a  little  one.  Unfortunately, 
the  endowment  of  research  concerns  primarily  the 
collection  of  facts,  whereas  at  this  stage  we  ap- 
pear to  be  in  as  much  need  of  adequate  interpreta- 
tion. Facts?  Yes,  by  the  mile  of  printed  page. 
But  what  do  they  mean?  An  earlier  period  sat 
within  and  reasoned  how  things  must  be,  instead 


54  THE  NEW  PEACE 

of  going  abroad  to  see  how  things  were.  The 
question  of  how  many  teeth  a  horse  had  was  hotly 
debated  through  many  writings  and  was  on  the 
point  of  leading  to  bloodshed,  when  one  of  the 
writers  bethought  him  at  last  to  look  into  a  horse's 
mouth  and  count.  Learned  scientists  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Pisa  refused  to  accept  Galileo's  discov- 
ery of  the  moons  of  Jupiter,  on  the  ground  that 
it  was  impossible  that  Jupiter  should  have  moons. 
They  argued  from  the  analogy  of  the  seven  win- 
dows set  in  the  microcosm  of  the  head  and  from 
"  many  other  phenomena  of  nature,  such  as  the 
seven  metals,  etc.,  that  the  number  of  the  planets 
is  necessarily  seven."  There  was  no  need  to 
look  through  Galileo's  telescope,  and  they  stoutly 
refused  to  do  it. 

We  have  swung  to  the  opposite  extreme.  In 
the  enthusiasm  of  our  consciously  recognized 
method,  observers  multiply,  but  interpreters,  who 
combine  higher  capacities,  are  the  gifts  of  Provi- 
dence only  at  rare  intervals.  The  Newtons,  the 
Lyells,  the  Helmholtzes,  the  Darwins,  are  worth 
waiting  for.  Perhaps  they  come  as  fast  as  they 
are  needed.  When  the  new  generalization  does 
come  to  be  made,  it  will  rest  on  a  wider  induction 
and  prove  to  be  all  the  more  luminous  and  author- 
itative. 

But,  it  may  be  asked,  is  not  the  external  world 


OUTSIDE  FACTS  $5 

itself  a  projection  of  the  internal  world?  and  is  not 
science,  by  holding  itself  so  closely  to  the  physical 
order,  after  all  missing  the  pathway  to  reality? 
Possibly  the  Berkeleyan  idealist  is  correct  when  he 
insists  that  "  things  "  are  only  "  definite  assem- 
blages of  states  of  consciousness,"  and  accordingly 
do  not  exist  apart  from  the  perceiving  mind. 
The  world,  in  that  case,  disappears  in  mist;  be- 
comes, as  Fichte  said,  only  a  dream  of  dreams. 
It  may  be  replied  that  these  are  conceptions  of 
closet  philosophers  and  only  need  the  touch  of  ex- 
perimental science  to  evaporate,  like  their  world  of 
matter,  into  thin  air.  But  there  are  not  wanting 
scientists  of  high  repute  who  maintain  a  closely 
allied  position.  The  President  of  the  American 
Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science  three 
years  ago  declared  that  we  do  not  have  and  never 
have  had  any  evidence  whatever  that  matter  ex- 
ists. And  Professor  Karl  Pearson  expresses 
practically  the  same  view.  "  The  mind,"  he  says, 
"  is  absolutely  confined  within  the  walls  of  its 
nerve  exchange ;  beyond  the  walls  of  sense-impres- 
sion it  can  logically  infer  nothing."  "  Immediate 
sense-impressions,"  he  says  further,  "  form  perma- 
nent impresses  in  the  brain,  which  psychically 
correspond  to  memory.  The  union  of  immediate 
sense-impressions  with  associated  stored  impres- 
sions leads  to  the  formation  of  '  constructs  '  which 


5 6  THE  NEW  PEACE 

we  project  '  outside  ourselves '  and  term  phe- 
nomena. The  real  world  for  us  lies  in  such  con- 
structs and  not  in  shadowy  things-in-themselves."  * 
It  so  chanced  that  the  evening  after  the  reading 
of  this  discussion  I  took,  after  the  sun  was  down,  a 
little  jaunt  across  the  railroad,  through  the  pines 
and  along  the  lighted  border  of  the  wood  as  far 
as  the  brook.  I  was  turning  over  in  my  mind 
Pearson's  statement  that  we  have  no  right  to  in- 
fer order  and  reason  and  benevolence  and  beauty 
outside  ourselves,  that  "  chaos  is  all  that  science 
can  assert  of  the  supersensuous."  Just  as  I 
reached  the  little  brook  and  its  unbroken  tangle  of 
alders  and  blackberries  and  vines,  a  startled 
cardinal  with  a  rapid  twitch,  twitch,  twitch,  flew 
out  of  a  sheltering  grape  arbor  at  my  side.  I 
thought  how  delightful  a  spot  he  had  chosen  for 
sleep.  The  water  slipping  over  the  little  ford 
made  only  enough  of  its  soft  murmuring  among 
the  pebbles  to  wake  him  if  it  should  suddenly  cease. 
The  flute-like  trills  of  a  hundred  white  tree- 
crickets,  clear  and  full  but  caressing,  would  surely 
allay  any  fever  of  excitement  which  the  day  had 
left  in  his  brain.  And  over-head  the  moon  with 
one  bright  attendant  had  already  cleared  the 
shoulder  of  the  pine  wood  on  the  slope  to  the 
southeastward,    and  was   ready  in   a   heaven  all 

1  Grammar  of  Science,  75,   107,   108. 


OUTSIDE  FACTS  57 

sweet  and  fair  to  watch  his  sleep  the  whole  night 
through.  When  I  turned  homeward  to  the  west 
the  sky  line  burned  red  through  a  bit  of  pine 
crowning  the  hill,  and  higher  up  a  radiant  saffron 
haze  all  but  quenched  the  steady  flame  of  Venus 
for  a  minute  or  two,  then  followed  its  lord  over 
the  rim  of  the  world.  Farther  on  a  lamp  beamed 
upon  me  through  the  door  of  a  humble  home  and 
just  beyond  it  a  locomotive,  with  brutal  self- 
assertiveness,  broke  in  upon  Nature's  passive 
serenity. 

Unwittingly  I  had  brought  my  scientist's  prob- 
lem out  into  the  midst  of  an  epitome  of  universal 
nature.  The  engine  was  the  symbol  of  toiling  and 
moiling  man  and  his  battle  for  bread  and  pelf; 
the  cottage  spoke  to  me  of  love  and  consecration; 
and  the  frightened  bird,  the  care-free  insect,  the 
glooming  wood  beneath,  and  the  glowing  planets 
on  high  were  witnesses  of  all  Nature's  realms  and 
provinces.  I  said,  Can  it  be  that  the  beauty  which 
I  admire  here  is  all  my  own,  being  purely  con- 
ceptual? that  the  order  and  adaptation  and  pur- 
pose which  thrill  in  my  mind  in  this  particular  ex- 
ternal situation  are  not  my  discoveries,  but  my 
creations?  Can  it  be  that  the  sense-impressions 
that  rouse  in  me  the  feeling  of  rationality  and 
harmony  spring  themselves  out  of  blank  chaos? 
And  this  conceiving  mind  which  works  such  mar- 


5  8  THE  NEW  PEACE 

vels  out  of  chaotic  materials  —  whence  came  it? 
How  comes  it  to  be  just  here  now,  not  only 
ordered  but  ordering?  Is  mind  the  offspring  of 
mindless  chaos? 

Allow  that  matter  is  not  reality,  but  only  phe- 
nomenon. It  must  nevertheless  express  and  sym- 
bolize reality  one  or  more  removes  back  of  it. 
This  ground  reality  which  we  are  never  able  to 
see  as  it  is,  whose  robes  flowing  through  the  world 
we  glimpse  here  and  there,  whose  shadow  is  the 
stage  of  our  life  drama  and  the  field  of  the 
scientific  quest,  this  ground  reality  may  be  in- 
scrutable in  itself,  inaccessible  to  our  present  ex- 
ploration outfit;  but  it  does  not  follow  that  it  is 
non-existent.  There  are,  in  fact,  three  independ- 
ent witnesses  to  the  reality  of  the  external  world, 
—  one  theoretical  and  two  practical.  Theoretic- 
ally considered  "  the  reality  of  the  external  world 
is  the  necessary  presupposition  of  the  logical 
sequence  of  the  phenomena  of  consciousness." 
One  practical  proof  is  presented  in  the  external 
results  of  our  inward  willing.  Sense-perceptions 
answer  accurately  to  the  inner  effort.  For  ex- 
ample, in  the  case  of  voluntary  muscular  move- 
ment, the  ego  is  conscious  of  being  resisted  by 
something  distinct  from  itself,  as  Dr.  Johnson 
is  said  to  have  refuted  the  idealism  of  Berkeley 
by  kicking  a   stone;   or  in  the  case  of  pain  we 


INSIDE  FACTS  59 

know  that  our  will  is  obstructed  by  a  cause  which 
does  not  lie  in  it  and  which  must  be,  therefore, 
an  activity  outside  ourselves.  Another  practical 
proof  of  the  reality  of  the  external  world  we  have 
in  the  observed  relations  of  objects  to  one  an- 
other. The  moon,  for  example,  influences  the 
tides  on  the  earth.  Clearly  this  influence  was  in 
operation  before  any  human  consciousness  had 
arrived  to  make  such  a  "  projection  "  of  an  in- 
ward state.  Uranus  and  Neptune  did  not  begin 
to  disturb  one  another  in  1846  when  Neptune  was 
discovered. 

2.  Inside  Facts.  To  a  few  men  of  science 
like  Ernst  Haeckel,  the  world  of  things  is  the 
only  real  world;  there  is  nothing  in  the  universe 
except  "  space-filling  matter  and  active  energy." 
The  manifestations  of  mental  life  are  reducible 
to  terms  of  nervous  energy  and  are  as  much  bound 
up  with  neuroplasm  as  the  mechanical  energy 
of  muscle  is  with  the  contractile  myaloplasm.  In 
other  words,  mind  is  the  physiological  function 
of  the  cells  in  certain  parts  of  the  cerebral  cortex, 
in  the  same  sense  as  contractility  is  the  physio- 
logical function  of  muscle  cells.  And  yet  when 
Haeckel  makes  sensation,  like  movement,  an  at- 
tribute of  all  matter  for  the  purposes  of  his  monis- 
tic theory,  does  he  not  tacitly  admit  in  another 
form  the  reality  of  the  thought  world,  which,  on 


6o  THE  NEW  PEACE 

the  dualistic  theory,  is  only  differently  related  to 
the  world  of  objects?  In  fact,  he  says  explicitly 
that  the  strenuous  opposition  between  modern 
monism  and  traditional  dualism  may  be  toned 
down  —  may,  indeed,  be  converted  into  a  friendly 
harmony.  In  recalling  this  language  of  his  Rid- 
dle of  the  Universe  of  1899,  he  assures  us  in 
1905  (The  Wonders  of  Life)  that  "this  con- 
ciliatory disposition  has  grown  stronger  and 
stronger "  in  the  interval.  Accordingly,  one  is 
not  surprised  to  read  a  few  sentences  farther  on, 
"  Our  realist  philosophy  of  life  teaches  us  that 
our  ideals  are  rooted  deep  in  human  nature." 

Now,  it  is  to  be  observed  that  on  any  theory 
the  inside  world  is  no  whit  less  real  than  the  out- 
side world.  Suppose  with  Haeckel  that  the  trinity 
of  substance  is  composed  of  matter,  force,  and 
sensation  with  its  elaboration  in  the  phenomena 
of  consciousness;  or  suppose  with  Ernst  Mach 
that  "  matter  "  is  only  a  mental  symbol  for  a 
complex  of  sensuous  elements,  the  universe  con- 
sisting only  of  force  and  consciousness;  or  again 
suppose  with  Ostwald  that  consciousness  is  but 
a  special  case  of  force  or  energy,  which  alone 
constitutes  the  universe;  —  in  any  case,  the  world 
of  thought  and  feeling  is  still  a  world  of  fact. 
As  such  it  lies  open  to  scientific  exploration. 

The  method  of  science  is  the  same  here  as  in 


INSIDE  FACTS  61 

the  outside  world.  For  the  method  of  intro- 
spection which  is  so  important  here,  is,  after  all, 
only  observation  with  its  eyes  turned  inward. 
But  the  conceptual  symbols  devised  to  aid  us  in 
the  study  of  physics  or  chemistry,  such  as  atoms, 
molecules,  and  the  conservation  of  energy,  are 
likely  to  prove  inapplicable  when  we  pass  to  a 
different  order  of  facts.  We  have  need  to  re- 
member always,  as  Mach  has  pointed  out,2  that 
these  devices  by  which  we  seek  to  reproduce  facts 
in  thought  are,  like  the  symbols  of  algebra,  ca- 
pable of  yielding  only  what  we  put  into  them. 
They  do  not  exist  except  in  our  minds,  and  have 
no  value  or  validity  save  as  short-hand  representa- 
tions in  thought  of  the  world  of  experience.  A 
new  province  of  that  world  will  require  new  sym- 
bols. In  the  sphere  of  mental  life  the  atomic 
theory  is  out  of  place  and  can  render  no  service. 
Nobody  expects  to  "  find  the  secret  of  genius  or 
the  moral  law  in  the  bottom  of  a  retort."  No 
Newton  or  Leibnitz  has  yet  arisen  to  give  al- 
gebraic expression  to  variations  in  the  states  of 
consciousness.  The  deep  affinity  which  draws 
two  spirits  together  does  not  vary  inversely  as 
the  square  of  the  distance.  The  world  of  emo- 
tion and  idea  remains  incapable  of  mathematical 
analysis,  in  spite  of  the  hopes  which  were  raised 

2  Analysis  of  the  Sensations,  passim. 


62  THE  NEW  PEACE 

fifty  years  ago  by  the  work  of  Weber  and  Fech- 
ner  on  sensation.  Too  little  is  as  yet  known  in 
this  high  region  for  the  fashioning  of  conceptual 
keys  to  unlock  its  problems.  It  is  frankly  con- 
fessed that  its  central  problem  can  be  approached 
at  present  only  by  way  of  theories  known  to  be 
inadequate  and  unsubstantiated  by  facts. 

And  yet  science  is  pushing  out  into  this  world 
of  mystery.  It  has  taken  up  its  task.  Its  con- 
fession of  ignorance  is  no  longer  held  to  justify 
the  preemptive  claim  of  metaphysics  and  theology 
to  all  the  rights  and  charters  of  exploration.  For 
1,300  years  the  sacred  capital  of  Tibet  was 
guarded  against  invasion  by  a  system  of  espionage 
and  penalties,  so  that  in  that  period  not  more  than 
twenty  foreigners  had  passed  within  its  walls. 
But  in  August  last  the  British  flag  was  unfurled 
in  Lhasa,  and  when  the  treaty  had  been  signed, 
the  lime-light  photograph  taken  in  the  council 
chamber  of  the  Potala  dispelled  the  last  mystery 
of  the  Asian  continent.  With  the  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility and  under  the  splendid  fascination  of 
an  extremely  difficult  task,  science  has  struck  tent 
at  the  Indian  border  and  is  off  for  the  roof  of  the 
world. 

We  conclude,  therefore,  with  Professor  Pear- 
son, that  the  legitimate  field  of  science  embraces 
all  the  mental  and  physical  facts  of  the  universe. 


FUNCTION  63 

The  Function  of  Science 

We  have  now  to  inquire  into  the  work  which 
science  does  in  its  proper  field.  What  is  its  bus- 
iness? its  aim?  What  do  these  delving  men  of 
science  seek?  What  is  precisely  the  task  which 
they  propose  to  themselves? 

From  his  first  awaking  to  self-consciousness 
man  has  been  infected  and  his  life  has  been 
moulded  by  an  insatiable  curiosity  in  the  presence 
of  the  mysteries  around  him  and  within  him. 
The  universe  of  air  and  sky,  the  multitudinous 
sea,  the  teeming  earth,  the  secret  stirrings  of  his 
own  nature,  have  been  a  lure  and  a  challenge  to 
his  capacity,  and  according  to  the  level  to  which 
he  had  risen,  he  answered  with  animism  and  taboo, 
with  myth  and  magic  and  theology.  These  an- 
swers, as  has  been  already  remarked,  are  all  forms 
of  primitive  science  into  the  structure  of  which 
religion  enters  as  an  inextricable  constituent. 
Even  after  these  thousands  of  years  we  are  still 
under  Nature's  spell,  and 

Those  stark  wastes  that  whiten  endlessly 
In  ghastly  solitude  about  the  pole, 

awe  and  fascinate  us  as  the  herds  of  cloud  cattle 
pasturing  in  the  plains  of  heaven,  or  the  marvel 
of  the  dawn,  awed  and  fascinated  our  forebears 
in  their  early  Aryan  home.     We  cannot  be  content 


64  THE  NEW  PEACE 

while  under  our  feet  miles  within  the  earth  secrets 
slumber  or  now  and  then  stir  to  send  a  defiant 
tremor  through  its  frame;  we  must  needs  sink  a 
well  into  the  midst  of  them,  and  if  it  go  twelve 
miles  deep  and  cost  two  millions  of  treasure  ac- 
cording to  a  recent  proposal,  so  much  the  better. 
We  shall  learn  more  than  if  we  laid  open  the  secret 
of  either  pole.  And  this  wondrous  personality, 
which  is  always  with  us  like  a  veiled  presence, 
whispers  tauntingly  behind  its  disguise,  "  closer 
am  I  than  all,  and  even  yet  unknown  " ;  and  vol- 
ume succeeds  volume  into  the  thousands,  some  of 
observation,  others  of  reflection,  all  striving  to 
lift  a  corner  or  peer  through  a  mesh  of  the  veil 
which  hides  us  from  ourselves. 

The  will  to  know  is  a  human  characteristic, 
and  Dante's  explanation  is  as  good  as  any  we 
might  offer  to-day:  "The  reason  whereof  may 
be  that  each  thing,  impelled  by  its  own  natural 
foresight,  inclines  to  its  own  perfection;  where- 
fore, inasmuch  as  knowledge  is  the  distinguish- 
ing perfection  of  our  soul,  wherein  consists  our 
distinguishing  blessedness,  all  of  us  are  naturally 
subject  to  the  longing  for  it."  This  inherent  love 
of  knowledge  drives  us  out  upon  our  quest,  this 
is  the  fountain  out  of  which  the  stream  of  science 
flows.  But  in  what  does  knowledge  consist? 
When  may  this  natural  craving  be  said  to  be  met? 


FUNCTION  6s 

In  the  words  of  the  great  philosopher-physicist 
of  Vienna,  "  Every  practical  and  intellectual  need 
is  satisfied  the  moment  our  thoughts  have  acquired 
the  power  to  represent  the  facts  of  the  senses 
completely.  Our  knowledge  of  a  natural  phe- 
nomenon is  as  complete  as  possible  when  our 
thoughts  so  marshal  before  the  eye  of  the  mind 
all  the  relevant  sense-given  facts  of  the  case  that 
they  may  be  regarded  almost  as  a  substitute  for 
these  facts,  and  the  facts  appear  to  us  as  old 
familiar  figures,  having  no  power  to  occasion  sur- 
prise." 3  Such  a  mental  picturing  of  the  facts 
of  nature  is  the  end  and  aim  of  science.  This 
is  all  we  can  legitimately  mean  by  explanation,  as 
indeed  the  etymology  of  the  term  suggests.  It 
means  to  make  thoroughly  plain,  i.  e.,  flat,  involv- 
ing the  removal  of  obstructions  and  irregulari- 
ties; consequently,  to  make  evident,  visible  to  the 
mental  eye.  Accordingly,  a  natural  phenomenon 
is  explained  when  we  are  able  to  reproduce  in 
thought  its  place  in  the  stream  of  events,  its 
antecedents  and  its  consequents,  and  feel  no  need 
of  further  inquiry.  The  phenomenon  of  old 
age,  for  example,  is  explained  in  the  scientific 
sense,  as  soon  as  we  can  picture  to  ourselves  the 
following  sequence  of  histological  events;  the 
growing  flaccidity  and  vacuolation  of  nerve,  mus- 

3  Ernst  Mach,  "Analysis  of  the  Sensations,"  p.  154. 


66  THE  NEW  PEACE 

cle,  and  gland  cells,  the  invasion  and  destruction 
of  these  wasted  cells  by  phagocytes  from  the 
blood,  the  filling  of  the  spaces  of  these  destroyed 
cells  by  the  supporting  tissue  until  the  essential 
tissue  of  the  organ  is  replaced  by  a  tissue  inca- 
pable of  discharging  the  proper  function  of  that 
organ.  Hence,  mental  decline,  muscular  weak- 
ness, scant  secretions,  defective  circulation. 

Now,  it  is  of  the  highest  importance  to  observe 
that  what  we  have  here  is  only  history;  it  is  simply 
the  description  of  a  certain  sequence  of  events. 
Old  age  is  explained,  you  will  observe,  only  in 
the  sense  of  u  the  descriptive  how,"  but  not  in 
the  sense  of  "  the  determinative  why."  We  un- 
derstand, i.e.,  see  mentally,  how  decrepitude  comes 
on,  not  why  it  comes  on.  A  moment  ago  we 
"  felt  no  need  of  further  inquiry,"  but  do  we  not 
now  see  that  another  question  does  actually  arise? 
The  phagocytes  eat  up  the  brain  cells  —  why? 
Why  this  self-defeating  cannibalism  among  the 
members  of  the  cell-state  in  one  organism?  The 
brain  cells  lose  their  plump  outline  and  the  pro- 
toplasm grows  watery  —  why?  Why  should  the 
neat  equilibrium  of  repair  and  waste  be  upset  at 
three-score  and  ten?  Why  this  particular  se- 
quence of  events  rather  than  some  other? 

"  As  a  matter  of  fact,  never  in  any  explanation 
do  we  reach  a  point  where  another  question  may 


LIMITATION  67 

not  or  does  not  arise,  and  in  the  end,  whatever 
the  nature  of  our  inquiry,  we  are  brought  to  a 
stand  by  ultimate  questions  which  cannot,  like 
their  predecessors,  be  made  fresh  starting-points, 
and  yet  are  no  true  intellectual  resting-places." 
It  is  precisely  at  this  point  that  the  limitations  of 
science  emerge.  And  they  become  all  the  more 
manifest,  if  with  the  late  distinguished  president 
of  the  British  Association  we  go  farther  and  in- 
sist that  the  function  of  science  is  not  merely  the 
discovery  of  the  co-existences  and  sequences  be- 
tween phenomena,  but  the  framing  of  a  concep- 
tion of  the  universe  in  its  inner  reality.  For 
science,  with  all  its  apparatus  of  formula  and 
method,  with  all  its  enthusiasm  and  penetration, 
stands  before  this  ultimate  reality  as  helpless  as 
was  primeval  man  in  the  presence  of  the  starry 
heavens  or  the  springtime's  verdant  resurrection. 
The  riddle  of  consciousness  itself  is  no  farther 
from  solution  than  the  riddle  of  the  ultimate 
reality  of  physical  nature.  A  so-called  law  of 
nature,  the  discovery  of  which  is,  so  far  at  least, 
the  highest  achievement  of  science,  is  nothing 
more  than  "  a  brief  expression  of  the  relation- 
ships and  sequences  of  certain  groups  of  percep- 
tions and  conceptions  " ;  in  other  words,  "  a  rule 
by  which  we  can  tell  more  or  less  accurately  what 
will    be    the    consequence    of    a    given    state    of 


68  THE  NEW  PEACE 

things."  It  does  not  touch  the  bond  of  connec- 
tion which  holds  event  to  event  in  an  endless 
chain,  nor  the  essence  of  the  material  of  its  in- 
dividual links.  Absolute  causation  and  essence 
are  both  beyond  the  reach  of  the  scientific  plum- 
met. Newton's  law  of  gravitation  is  perhaps  the 
greatest  of  all  scientific  discoveries,  but  the  nature 
of  gravity  is  as  much  an  enigma  to-day  as  it  was 
to  Newton. 

Make  the  rounds  of  your  fine  laboratories 
where  Science  sits  enthroned  among  her  devotees. 
Put  a  few  questions  and  mark  the  monotony  of 
the  answers.  Here  is  a  marvellous  conjunction 
of  crystal  and  brass,  and  in  the  path  of  the  beam 
of  light  which  traverses  it  lies  a  growing  egg. 
Ask  the  dividing  nucleus  how  knoweth  it  mathe- 
matics and  mechanics,  having  never  learned.  Its 
sole  response  is  the  silent  and  uninterrupted  dis- 
play of  its  mathematics  and  mechanics,  dividing 
and  distributing  with  precision  its  mysterious 
chromatic  substance.  Turn  to  the  beaming  biolo- 
gist at  your  side  and  ask  what  it  is  that  sets  this 
bit  of  matter  over  against  the  whole  realm  of 
inorganic  nature.  He  will  answer,  "  Life." 
"  But  what  is  that?  "  "  I  do  not  know."  Ask 
his  neighbor  the  chemist  what  he  means  by  his 
oft-invoked  and  much-loved  chemical  affinity. 
With  some  preliminary  skirmishing  about  atoms 


LIMITATION  69 

and  ions  he  will  at  last  reply,  "  I  do  not  know." 
Cross  the  campus  and  ply  the  physicist  with  the 
question  "What  is  light?"  "Light  is  radiant 
energy  propagated  by  vibrations  of  the  ether." 
"  Yes,  but  what  is  the  ether  and  why  does  it  vi- 
brate? "  He  cannot  get  beyond  Lord  Salisbury's 
famous  definition,  "  Ether  is  the  nominative  case 
of  the  verb  to  undulate,"  and  dismisses  you  with 
"  I  do  not  know."  The  psychologist  has  a  nim- 
ble wit,  but  with  persistence  and  care  it  may  at 
length  be  cornered  on  the  question  "  What  is 
thought?"  He  may  begin  with  the  parallelism 
of  the  nerve  process  and  the  thought  process, 
antomatism  or  interactionism,  but  he  will  end  with 
the  confession,  "  I  do  not  know." 

It  must  be  apparent  that  it  is  precisely  at  the 
crucial  point  in  every  line  of  research  that  the 
scientific  method  breaks  down.  When  the  great 
French  chemist  said,  "  The  word  mystery  is  ex- 
cluded from  scientific  language  and  methods,"  he 
did  not  mean  to  say  that  science  had  now  ascer- 
tained the  causes  of  all  phenomena,  but  simply 
that  there  were  no  phenomena  without  causes. 
Indeed,  the  farther  the  man  of  science  pushes  his 
questioning  of  Nature,  the  more  oppressed  he  be- 
comes with  the  limitations  of  science,  and  the 
word  most  familiar  to  his  tongue  is,  "  I  do  not 
know."     It  is  true  that  the  torch  of  science  grows 


yo  THE  NEW  PEACE 

brighter  with  each  passing  year  and  shoots  its 
rays  deeper  into  the  enveloping  darkness;  but  the 
enlargement  of  the  sphere  of  light  is,  from  an- 
other view-point,  the  multiplication  of  the  points 
of  its  contact  with  the  unknown.  One  secret 
guessed  brings  to  view  two  deeper  ones;  Science 
springs  more  questions  than  she  solves. 

Deep  under  deep  forever  goes, 
Heaven  over  heaven  expands. 

In  front  of  every  gate  out  of  our  modern  Thebes 
sits  a  Sphinx  with  an  unsolved  riddle.  Even 
that  modern  GEdipus,  Ernst  Haeckel,  essaying  at 
the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century  to  summarize  its 
teaching  and  to  solve  "  the  riddle  of  the  Uni- 
verse," does  not  claim  to  offer  a  perfect  solution 
of  it,  but  only  to  show,  as  he  himself  says,  how 
nearly  we  have  approached  to  "  that  immeasur- 
ably distant  goal."  After  sixty-five  years  of 
added  scientific  progress,  we  have  still  preserved 
to  us  Carlyle's  "  great,  deep,  sacred,  infinitude 
of  Nescience,  whither  we  can  never  penetrate,  on 
which  science  swims  as  a  mere  superficial  film." 
His  word  of  1840  is  true  to-day:  "This  world, 
after  all  our  science  and  sciences,  is  still  a  miracle; 
wonderful,  inscrutable,  magical,  and  more." 


RELATIONS  71 

The  Relations  of  Science 

We  have  now  dealt  with  the  content,  method, 
results,  scope,  and  function  of  science.  This  sur- 
vey has  perhaps  prepared  us  for  the  considera- 
tion of  the  relations  which  it  sustains  to  life. 
This  subject  will  contribute  to  the  clearness  and 
fullness  of  our  view  of  what  science  is  in  itself, 
and  you  see  that  it  involves  directly  the  matter 
with  which  this  lectureship  is  concerned.  Let  us 
think  of  science  and  life  in  three  particular  aspects 
of  life, —  physical  well-being,  culture,  and  relig- 
ion. The  first  two  will  occupy  us  for  the  re- 
mainder of  this  hour;  the  last  will  best  be  post- 
poned to  the  later  lectures. 

Manifestly  the  closest  bonds  exist  between 
science  and  life  in  all  its  expressions.  The  aris- 
tocratic science  of  mathematics,  self-sufficient  and 
abstract,  may  indeed  have  established  but  slight 
connections  with  the  actual  world  of  experience. 
An  eminent  cultivator  and  apologist  of  this  high 
science  has  declared 4  that  its  results  are  inde- 
pendent of  the  direction  which  the  development 
of  civilization  has  taken  on  this  planet, —  so  ab- 
solute and  independent,  in  fact,  that  its  truths 
would  afford  the  only  basis  of  an  understanding 
with  any  intelligent  beings  on  other  planets.     And 

*Prof.   H.  Schubert,  The  Monist,  Jan.,  1896. 


72  THE  NEW  PEACE 

yet  even  pure  mathematics  may  turn  to  practical 
account  as  an  aid  in  the  progress  of  the  other 
sciences.  For  it  is  probably  true  that  modern  sci- 
ence is  most  clearly  differentiated  from  the  vague 
guesses  of  the  ancient  philosophers  and  poets  by 
the  mathematical  spirit,  with  its  effort  to  measure 
and  to  count.  Clerk-Maxwell  said  that  the  clock, 
the  balance,  and  the  foot-rule  are  the  symbols  of 
the  scientific  method.  Certainly,  in  the  case  of 
all  the  other  sciences,  the  relation  to  the  varied 
modes  and  expressions  of  life  is  direct  and  close 
and  marked  by  the  interplay  of  reciprocal  in- 
fluence. 

i.  Science  and  Physical  Well-Being.  Of 
course,  the  most  obvious  relationship  is  presented 
in  the  practical  ministry  of  science  to  life  on  its 
physical  side.  The  evidences  of  this  ministry  are 
so  abundant  and  so  striking  as  to  leave  no  ground 
to-day  for  that  old  disparagement  that  science 
stands  aloof  from  life.  It  must,  indeed,  be  ad- 
mitted that  the  aim  of  science  is  the  discovery 
of  the  rational  order  of  the  universe,  with  no 
utilitarian  purpose  beyond  it;  to  find  the  truth 
of  Nature  for  the  joy  of  the  quest,  as  well  as 
for  the  inherent  good  of  holding  it.  In  fact, 
the  investigator  who  sets  himself  the  task  of  dis- 
covering something  useful  handicaps  his  research 
at  the  start  and  is  rarely  able  to  keep  to  the  path 


EXTERNALS  73 

of  his  generous  purpose.  It  has  turned  out,  ac- 
cordingly, that  in  most  cases  the  man  who  cul- 
tivates pure  science  and  the  man  who  cultivates 
applied  science  are  not  the  same.  As  Bacon 
said  long  ago  in  the  very  treatise  which  made 
utility  the  only  justification  of  science,  "  the  ad- 
vancement of  science  is  the  work  of  a  powerful 
genius,  the  prize  and  reward  belong  to  the  vul- 
gar." And  yet,  remote  as  pure  science  investi- 
gation appears  to  be  from  a  fruitful  application  in 
the  hands  of  the  inventor,  it  is  in  reality  the  con- 
dition and  the  germ  of  every  such  application. 
When  Maxwell  in  1873  made  his  great  discovery 
of  the  electro-magnetic  nature  of  heat  and  light, 
he  did  not  foresee  wireless  telegraphy  in  it. 
Nevertheless,  no  Maxwell,  no  Marconi.  We 
cannot  predict  definitely  the  practical  service  which 
the  pure  science  work  of  Becquerel  and  the  Curies 
will  yield,  though  we  may  not  question  its  high 
promise.  Even  if  it  do  not  turn  to  taxable  prop- 
erty, it  will  minister  to  the  higher  utilities  of  in- 
tellectual satisfaction  and  resource. 

Within  the  memory  of  some  of  you  science  has 
wrought  more  change  in  the  conditions  of  life 
than  was  witnessed  in  the  previous  thousand  years. 
It  has  raised  the  standard  of  comfort.  We  are 
reckoned  to  be  sixteen  times  more  comfortable 
than  our  grandparents  were  in  1850.    Science  has 


74  THE  NEW  PEACE 

lengthened  by  some  six  or  eight  years  the  average 
duration  of  human  life.  What  is  more  impor- 
tant, it  has  heightened  its  efficiency  ten-  to  fifty- 
fold,  by  improving  its  external  conditions  and  by 
putting  into  its  hand  new  forces  and  instruments. 
The  rapidity  and  ease  of  communication  would 
seem  fabulous,  if  they  were  not  familiar.  Sec- 
tional and  national  barriers,  if  not  boundaries, 
are  fast  dissolving.  You  have  observed  how 
quickly  local  questions  become  national,  and  na- 
tional questions  international.  I  am  not  sure  that 
the  control  of  Nature  with  which  science  has 
equipped  us,  its  defenses  against  the  enemies  of 
our  life  that  impair  its  tone  and  dissipate  its  en- 
ergies, and  the  light  which  it  is  beginning  to  shed 
on  the  obscure  problems  of  heredity, —  I  am  not 
sure  that  these  things  do  not  warrant  the  hope  of 
some  improvement  in  the  race  itself,  in  its  sub- 
stance and  texture  over  and  above  the  enhancing 
of  its  physical  well-being.  Few  serious  persons 
will  venture  to  set  limits  to  the  new  science  of 
Eugenics  which  the  indefatigable  Sir  Francis 
Galton  is  promoting.  It  deals  with  all  the  in- 
fluences which  improve  and  develop  the  inborn 
qualities  of  a  race. 

Of  what  value  after  all  is  the  ministry  of  sci- 
ence to  life,  if  it  exhaust  itself  upon  externals? 
A  traveller  in  India  reports  that  it  is  no  uncom- 


CULTURE  75 

mon  thing  to  see  a  Naga  from  the  upper  valleys 
of  the  Brahmaputra,  who  but  a  few  years  ago 
was  a  naked  head-hunting  savage,  now  clad  in 
a  tweed  coat  and  carrying  a  Manchester  um- 
brella buying  his  ticket  at  a  railway  station.  One 
cannot  but  fear  that,  in  spite  of  his  finery,  he  is 
a  head-hunter  still.  Does  science  stop  short  with 
the  decoration  of  life,  and  leave  untouched  its 
interior  and  real  interests,  its  thoughts  and  feel- 
ings, its  outlook  and  ideals,  its  abiding  satisfac- 
tions and  the  higher  forms  of  its  expression? 
Does  science  bear  gifts  to  business,  and  stand 
with  empty  hands  before  culture? 

2.  Science  and  Culture.  We  shall  discover  the 
relations  which  science  bears  to  culture,  if  we  con- 
sider the  means  of  culture  in  education  and  the  ex- 
pression of  culture  in  literature  and  art. 

The  educational  curriculum  in  its  present  form 
is  the  result  of  a  gradual  growth  from  very 
ancient  and  rude  beginnings.  As  in  the  case  of 
a  living  organism,  its  successive  modifications 
have  been  closely  dependent  upon  its  environment. 
Accordingly,  the  culture  apparatus  and  methods 
of  one  period  and  race  differ  more  or  less  widely 
from  those  of  other  periods  and  races.  The  his- 
tory of  this  development  is  intertwined  with  the 
progress  of  external  events.  Of  course,  the 
widening  and  deepening  of  natural  knowledge  in 


76  THE  NEW  PEACE 

our  time  multiplied  the  subjects  of  study,  and  each 
new-comer  at  once  challenged  the  preemptive 
right  of  its  predecessors  to  the  whole  field  of  edu- 
cation. Many  of  the  new  subjects,  moreover, 
yielded  themselves  with  great  hopefulness  to  the 
function  of  mental  culture  and  had,  besides,  an 
important  bearing  on  the  practical  conduct  of  life. 
At  first  a  natural  conservatism  asserted  itself  in 
resisting  any  breach  of  the  classico-mathematical 
discipline,  but  gradually  gave  over  the  struggle 
first  in  the  universities,  then  in  the  colleges  and 
secondary  schools,  and  finally  in  the  primary 
schools.  The  battle  of  the  sciences  for  recogni- 
tion in  the  schools  is  won.  Universally  won  in 
theory,  but  the  actual  occupation  of  all  the  con- 
quered territory  is  yet  to  be  effected.  The  hu- 
manities have  not  been  displaced  and  ought  never 
to  be,  perhaps;  but  they  have  been  forced  to 
make  room  for  the  sciences,  which  have  now  been 
introduced  into  every  stage  of  the  educational 
process.  Three  results  have  followed :  —  The 
rigidity  of  the  form  of  education  has  been  relaxed, 
and  a  rational  adaptation  to  individual  capacity 
and  need  has  become  possible;  we  have  acquired 
a  new  standard  of  educational  values;  and,  lastly, 
the  older  subjects,  rejuvenated  by  the  contagious 
method  of  science,  have  now  a  new  view-point 
and  a  changed  emphasis,  and  have  made  immense 


CULTURE  77 

gains  in  interest,  in  culture  value,  and  in  vitality. 

If  we  pass  from  the  tools  of  education  to  the 
art  of  using  them,  we  shall  have  to  own  that  there 
has  been  some  disappointment  of  the  hopes  which 
were  raised  by  science.  For  the  old  problems  of 
educational  method  remain  and  there  is  yet  a 
distressing  waste  of  time  and  the  raw  material 
in  the  educational  process.  Little  children  even 
to-day  would  seem  to  have  much  occasion  to  be 
thankful  for  that  "  special  providence  "  which  not 
only  "  watches  over  them,"  but  somehow  gets 
them  educated  in  spite  of  their  teachers.  Per- 
haps we  have  blundered  in  ever  supposing  that 
the  art  of  education,  any  more  than  other  prov- 
inces of  life,  could  be  reduced  to  the  mechanical 
exactitude  of  formal  science.  And  yet  is  there 
not  a  discernible  movement  of  that  art  in  the  di- 
rection of  science?  The  scientific  study  of  the 
contents  and  development  of  the  child  mind, 
though  but  just  begun,  has  thrown  light  upon  its 
normal  interests  and  its  successively  arising  needs, 
and  has  materially  transformed  educational  theory 
and  practice  for  the  better.  And  it  would  be  un- 
fair and  unwise  to  discredit  so  soon  in  the  field 
of  education  a  method  which  has  been  uniformly 
successful  elsewhere. 

Literature  is  the  exponent  and  standard  of  cul- 
ture.    It  is  one  of  the  chief  forms  in  which  the 


7  8  THE  NEW  PEACE 

higher  capacities  of  man  shine  out  and  make 
record  of  themselves.  Do  its  contemporary 
phases  show  any  traces  of  the  scientific  revolu- 
tion? How  has  it  responded  to  the  pressure  of 
the  new  knowledge  ? 

In  a  period  whose  intellectual  interests  lie  pre- 
vailingly in  the  body  of  scientific  truth,  when 
science  is  the  support  and  comfort  of  the  humblest 
life,  as  well  as  the  basis  of  wellnigh  the  whole  of 
our  thinking,  one  would  expect  the  rise  of  what 
we  may  be  permitted  to  call  —  pace  Mr.  Matthew 
Arnold — a  distinctively  scientific  literature.  It 
has  come,  and  in  enormous  volume.  There  is, 
besides,  a  deep  tinge  of  science  in  the  highest 
forms  of  recent  literature,  as  in  Tennyson  and 
Browning,  while  the  problems  of  sociology,  psy- 
chology, and  heredity  often  supply  the  motif  of 
popular  fiction. 

Of  course,  the  history  of  the  literary  response 
to  the  touch  of  science  is  complicated  by  the  co- 
existence of  widely  different  attitudes  and  the  sur- 
vival into  a  later  time  of  impressions  and  effects 
which  logically  belong  to  an  earlier  stage  of  the 
development.  Let  me  suggest  the  chief  stages 
of  this  logical  development.5  The  first  contact 
of  the  new  knowledge  with  literature  awakened 

5  Quoted  with  some  expansion  from  the  author's  "  Laboratory 
and  Pulpit,"   36,   37. 


CULTURE  79 

the  fear  that  the  poetry  of  life,  its  sentiments  and 
ideals,  would  be  rudely  dealt  with  by  the  hard  and 
fierce  man  of  science  who  bustled  on  to  the  stage 
with  the  chatter  of  instruments,  with  a  pigeon- 
hole and  a  physical  test  for  very  phenomenon  of 
the  soul.     In  1829  Edgar  Poe  cried  out  to  science, 

Why  preyest  thou  thus  upon  the  poet's  heart, 
Vulture,  whose  wings  are  dull  realities? 

About  the  same  time  Keats  revolted  no  less 
strongly  against  the  ruthless  extension  of  scientific 
explanation,  which  seemed  to  him  to  break  the 
wing  of  imagination  and  to  destroy  the  beauty 
of  the  world  by  dissecting  it.  The  feeling  is 
finely  delineated  more  recently  by  Walt  Whit- 
man: — 

When    I   heard   the   learn'd   astronomer; 

When    the    proofs,    the    figures,    were    ranged    in    columns 

before    me; 
When  I  was  shown  the  charts,  and  diagrams,  to  add,  divide, 

and  measure  them; 
When  I,  sitting,  heard  the  astronomer,  where  he  lectured 

with   much    applause    in    the    lecture-room; 
How  soon,  unaccountable,  I  became  tired  and  sick, 
Till  rising  and  gliding  out,  I  wandered  off  by  myself, 
In  the  mystical  moist  night  air,  and  from  time  to  time 
Looked  up  in  perfect  silence  at  the  stars. 

And  what  severer  indictment  could  be  brought 
against  science  than  this  of  Amiel,  certainly  one 
of   the   most  brilliant   and   deeply   instructed   of 


80  THE  NEW  PEACE 

modern  critics,  who,  in  deprecation  of  what  he 
calls  the  laboratory  smell  of  Taine's  "  English 
Literature,"  says,  "  I  imagine  this  kind  of  thing 
will  be  the  literature  of  the  future,  ...  as  differ- 
ent as  possible  from  Greek  art,  giving  us  algebra 
instead  of  life,  the  formula  instead  of  the  image, 
the  exhalations  of  the  crucible,  instead  of  the 
divine  madness  of  Apollo.  Cold  vision  will  re- 
place the  joys  of  thought,  and  we  shall  see  the 
death  of  poetry,  flayed  and  dissected  by  science." 
Following  this  stage  of  fear  and  revulsion 
come  bewilderment  and  pessimism  at  sight  of 
Nature  "  red  in  tooth  and  claw  with  ravine,"  and 
the  deep  tragedy  of  life  palpitating  in  the  grasp 
of  inexorable  law:  —  as  Thomson  puts  it  in  "  The 
City  of  the  Dreadful  Night," 

The  sense  that  every  struggle  brings  defeat, 
Because  Fate  holds  no  prize  to  crown  success; 

That  all  the  oracles  are  dumb  or  cheat, 
Because  they  have  no  secret  to  express. 

The  feeling  often  shadows  the  brow  of  Tenny- 
son and  is  the  characteristic  note  of  Arnold  and 
"  the  scornful  yet  terrified  "  Byron.  The  com- 
plete surrender  to  the  scientific  impression  is  seen 
in  the  naturalism  of  Zola  and  Thomas  Hardy, 
who  frankly  accepted  and  utilized  the  new  knowl- 
edge, turning  it  into  the  bricks  and  mud  of  realism. 
After   it   follows   the   transfiguration   of   Nature 


CULTURE  8 1 

such  as  one  finds  in  Richard  Jefferies,  George 
McDonald,  and  Watts-Dunton.  The  final  stage 
of  sympathetic  response  and  adjustment  is  reached 
when  genius  awakes  to  the  new  material  which 
science  lays  at  its  feet,  and  is  kindled  into  trium- 
phant faith  and  optimism  by  the  wide  vision  of 
evolution.  That  is  precisely  the  distinction  of 
Robert  Browning. 

It  is  interesting  to  observe  that  this  issue  was 
divined  by  Wordsworth's  infallible  insight  before 
the  development  which  I  have  sketched  begun. 
In  the  preface  of  the  "  Lyrical  Ballads  "  (1800) 
he  wrote:  "  Poetry  is  the  breath  and  finer  spirit  of 
all  knowledge;  it  is  the  impassioned  expression 
which  is  in  the  countenance  of  all  science.  .  .  . 
If  the  labors  of  men  of  science  should  ever  create 
any  material  revolution,  direct  or  indirect,  in  our 
condition  and  in  the  impressions  which  we  habit- 
ually receive,  the  poet  will  sleep  then  no  more 
than  at  present;  he  will  be  ready  to  follow  the 
steps  of  the  man  of  science,  .  .  .  carrying  sensa- 
tion into  the  midst  of  the  objects  of  the  science 
itself." 

Against  such  high  authority  and  the  testimony 
of  recent  literary  history,  the  question  is  still 
asked,  can  poetry  survive  in  the  cold  white  light 
of  science?  Does  not  imagination,  which  is  the 
real    poet,    pass   with   mystery   into    banishment 


82  THE  NEW  PEACE 

under  the  decree  of  science?  Was  not  the  early 
protest  of  the  poets  just  and  rational,  after  all? 
It  may  be  replied,  in  the  first  place,  that  the 
work  of  the  scientific  investigator  and  the  work 
of  the  poet,  so  far  from  being  incompatible  and 
mutually  exclusive,  show,  if  one  look  beneath  the 
surface,  a  deep  and  inherent  affinity.  As  I  have 
pointed  out,  the  process  of  a  research  is  briefly 
this:  "Observation  starts  a  hypothesis  and  ex- 
periment tests  whether  the  hypothesis  be  true  or 
no."  In  his  "  Life  of  Claude  Bernard,"  Sir 
Michael  Foster  says:  "  It  is  in  the  putting  forth 
the  hypothesis  that  the  true  man  of  science  shows 
the  creative  power  which  makes  him  and  the  poet 
brothers.  He  must  be  a  sensitive  soul  ready  to 
vibrate  to  Nature's  touches.  Before  the  dull  eye 
of  the  ordinary  man  facts  pass  one  after  another 
in  long  procession,  but  pass  without  effect,  awak- 
ening nothing.  In  the  eye  of  the  man  of  genius, 
be  he  poet  or  man  of  science,  the  same  facts  light 
up  an  illumination,  in  the  one  of  beauty,  in  the 
other  of  truth.  Each  possesses  a  responsive  im- 
agination. Such,"  he  continues,  "  had  Bernard, 
and  the  responses  which  in  his  youth  found  ex- 
pression in  verse,  in  his  maturer  and  trained  mind 
took  on  the  form  of  scientific  hypotheses."  6 

6  Cf.   Balzac,   "  Wild   Ass'   Skin," — "  Is  not   Cuvier  the   great 
poet  of  our  era?  " 


CULTURE  83 

Moreover,  let  us  not  confound  the  activity  of 
the  poetic  imagination  with  the  materials  which 
it  employs.  Surely  it  is  not  an  owl  —  this  high- 
est of  our  powers  —  an  owl  getting  abroad  only 
in  the  dark,  and  limited  in  its  range  by  certain 
traditional  boundaries.  It  is,  indeed,  true,  as 
Edgar  Poe  lamented,  that  the  day-spring  of 
scientific  truth  has  driven  the  hamadryad  from 
the  wood,  the  naiad  from  her  flood,  and  the  elfin 
from  the  green  grass,  except  perhaps  in  Norway 
at  the  limit  of  European  civilization,  on  the  out- 
skirts of  which,  we  are  told,  the  great  primitive 
gods  still  dwell  and  where  elves  and  fairies  and 
mermaids  are  still  regarded  as  domestic  animals. 
But  if  the  fairies  are  gone,  are  there  no  "  fairy 
tales  of  science,"  to  use  a  phrase  of  Tennyson's? 
Wherefore  should  the  poets,  says  Browning,  seek 
to  — 

Recapture  ancient  fable  that  escapes, 
Push  back  reality,  repeople  earth 
With  vanished  falseness,  recognize  no  worth 
In  fact  new-born  unless  'tis  rendered  back 
Pallid  with  fancy.  .  .  . 

Let  things  be  —  not  seem, 
I  counsel  rather, —  do,  and  nowise  dream! 
Earth's  young  significance  is  all  to  learn. 

The  banishment  of  the  pretty  fictions  of  the  Greek 
and  Scandinavian  mythology,  which,  it  may  be 
observed,  have  been  in  exile  now  many  centuries, 


84  THE  NEW  PEACE 

in  no  way  impoverishes  the  imagination.  In- 
deed, this  great  instrument  of  scientific  progress 
has  not  only  been  trained  by  it,  but  has  been  en- 
riched by  a  wealth  of  materials  which  endows  it 
for  the  highest  possible  creative  tasks.  If  it  still 
require  for  stimulus  and  food  the  sense  of  wonder, 
it  need  not  stop  with  Lowell's  crumb  — 

Faith  and  wonder  and  the  primal  earth 
Are  born  into  the  world  with  every  child, — 

but  press  on  into  the  deeper  physics  and  biology 
of  the  day  to  find  mystery  still  at  the  heart  of 
universal  Nature,  and  the  sum  of  things  more 
vital,  more  wonderful,  more  majestic  and  beau- 
tiful than  ever  it  was  in  the  twilight  of  the  sciences. 
Imagination  has  reconstructed  the  geological  past 
of  the  earth  and  the  systems  of  the  world  of 
stars.  The  possibility  of  a  similar  inductive 
knowledge  of  the  future  has  scientific  sanction, 
and  what  a  world  for  imagination  is  there :  — 
The  new  element  for  the  vacant  space  in  Men- 
deleef's  table,  the  new  planet  which  vexes  its 
sister  in  the  dark,  the  new  flower  or  fruit  asleep 
in  divergent  types,  the  new  light  about  to  spring, 
the  new  society  coming  forward  out  of  the  future 
to  meet  us,  the  fascinating  question,  What  is  to 
come  after  man? 

Permit  me  to  add  that  the  hypothesis  which 


CULTURE  85 

these  observations  suggest,  namely,  that  the  prog- 
ress of  science  has  not  been  unfavorable  to  crea- 
tive literature,  has  been  already  verified  by  the 
test  of  experiment.  Neither  the  quantity  nor  the 
quality  of  poetry  shows  any  abatement  under  the 
influence  of  the  all-conquering  science  of  our  time. 
Art  is  so  closely  akin  to  the  highest  literary 
form  that  it  is  not  necessary  to  speak  in  detail  of 
its  relation  to  science.  De  Quincey's  classic  dis- 
tinction between  the  literature  of  power  and  the 
literature  of  knowledge  is  exactly  paralleled  by 
Ruskin's  distinction  of  two  sorts  of  painting. 
The  literature  of  knowledge,  according  to  De 
Quincey,  merely  transcribes  the  fact,  nothing 
more;  the  literature  of  power  gives  us,  not  the 
fact,  but  the  writer's  sense  of  the  fact,  or,  as 
Browning  puts  it,  "  fuses  his  live  soul  and  that 
inert  stuff."  It  is  just  the  difference  between 
chronicle  and  history,  between  a  coast  survey  and 
Wordsworth's  sonnet,  with  its  "  gentleness  of 
heaven  is  on  the  sea  "  and  its  "  Nun  breathless 
with  adoration."  And  so  Ruskin  speaks  of  topo- 
graphical and  mechanical  painting,  which  is  con- 
cerned only  to  reproduce  faithfully  every  detail 
of  a  landscape  as  it  is,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  a 
totally  different  kind  of  painting,  which  gives  not 
the  actual  facts  of  the  artist's  subject,  but  the  im- 
pression which  it  made  on  his  mind.     I  need  not 


86  THE  NEW  PEACE 

remind  you  that  the  literature  of  power  is  the  only 
kind  of  literature,  and  that  a  camera  is  not  an 
artist.  Any  work  of  art,  whether  pictorial  or 
plastic  or  poetical,  is  primarily  a  reflection,  not 
of  the  external  world,  but  of  the  soul  of  the  artist. 

It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  the  artistic  impulse, 
like  the  brush  and  chisel  which  in  secluded  studios 
beautified  Florence  even  while  the  populace  were 
fighting  in  the  barricaded  streets,  is  "  safe  in  un- 
contaminate  reserve  "  against  any  outward  vio- 
lence. Safe  also,  so  long  as  imagination  and  emo- 
tion are  essential  features  of  human  nature, 
against  deterioration  into  the  camera  type;  for 
it  cannot  deny  itself.  So  far  from  reducing  art 
to  one  of  its  own  branches  to  record  the  demon- 
strable fact  like  a  sensitive  machine  as  Zola  proph- 
esied it  would  do,  science  in  reality  widens  the 
horizon  of  art  and  deepens  its  penetration  and 
enlarges  the  treasury  of  ideas  from  which  its  emo- 
tion may  flow  out  into  forms  of  beauty. 

And  here  again  the  actual  history  is  available 
to  test  the  validity  of  these  antecedent  considera- 
tions. At  the  beginning  of  the  Victorian  era 
stagnation  is  said  to  have  characterized  the  art 
of  England,  while  contemporaneously  with  the 
scientific  development  of  that  era  there  was  a 
revival  of  English  art,  and  to-day  the  critics  recog- 
nize an  English  school  of  art.     It  was,  therefore, 


CULTURE  87 

fitting  and  symbolic  of  contemporary  culture  that 
John  Ruskin,  the  herald  and  prophet  of  the  re- 
vival of  English  art,  should  have  designed,  as  he 
himself  tells  us,  the  first  window  of  the  fagade 
of  the  museum  of  Oxford,  in  which  was  inaugu- 
rated the  study  of  natural  science  in  England,  in 
true  fellowship  with  literature. 


LECTURE  III 
SCIENCE  IN  RELIGION 


My  own  East! 
How  nearer  God  we  were!     He  glows  above 
With  scarce  an  intervention,  presses  close 
And  palpitatingly,  his  soul  o'er  ours; 
We  feel  him,  nor  by  painful  reason  know. 

—  Browning,  Luria. 

Science  was  Faith  once;  Faith  were  Science  now, 
Would  she  but  lay  her  bow  and  arrows  by 
And  arm  her  with  the  weapons  of  the  time. 

—  Lowell,  The  Cathedral. 


SCIENCE  IN  RELIGION 

THE  concluding  part  of  the  last  lecture  was 
an  inquiry  into  the  relation  of  science  to 
physical  well-being  and  to  culture.  We  come  now 
to  ask  how  science  stands  related  to  the  highest 
expression  which  life  takes, —  its  response  to  the 
call  of  the  universal  Spirit  behind  and  within  all 
nature.  How  has  the  religious  life  fared  during 
the  reconstruction  of  the  economic  and  intellectual 
life?  Has  faith  lost  its  way  in  our  roomier  uni- 
verse? Does  it  find  the  new  climate  wholesome? 
Is  it  able  to  live  and  thrive  in  this  scientific  at- 
mosphere? 

In  observance  of  the  Socratic  dictum  quoted 
early  in  our  joint  studies  and  in  preparation  for 
this  last  inquiry,  we  need  to  seek  a  definition  of  re- 
ligion, at  least  to  make  sure  of  what  we  mean 
when  we  use  the  term.  Whereupon  I  think  we 
shall  find  science  in  religion  and  religion  in  science. 

I  am  venturing,  I  know,  to  speak  of  music  in 
the  presence  of  Wagner.  But  I  remember  that 
the  simple  hop-waltz,  the  jig,  and  the  folk-song 
have  in  the  hands  of  the  music-masters  grown  up 
into  the  classic  form  of  the  symphony.  May  I 
suggest,  in  further  extenuation  of  this  rashness, 

91 


92  THE  NEW  PEACE 

that  the  combination  of  the  non-professional  with 
the  professional  view,  especially  in  a  matter  so 
deeply  human  as  religion,  may  issue  in  a  stereo- 
scopic solidity  and  clearness  of  outline  which 
either  view  alone  might  lack.  Moreover,  the 
present  discussion  may"  seem  in  your  expert  eyes 
to  be  the  less  presumptuous,  if  you  will  be  good 
enough  to  remember  that  it  aims  to  set  forth  a 
particular  aspect  of  the  non-professional  view, 
treating  religion  as  a  natural  phenomenon  and 
approaching  it  from  the  side  of  natural  history. 

What  is  Religion? 

There  are  said  to  be  ten  thousand  definitions 
of  religion.  I  have  no  wish  to  add  another.  For 
the  practical  purposes  of  the  religious  experience 
they  might  all  be  dispensed  with.  The  race  of 
men  endowed  with  the  highest  religious  genius 
was  least  given  to  speculation.  Conduct,  not 
abstract  truth,  is  the  concern  of  the  Hebrew; 
life,  not  the  philosophy  of  life.  He  felt  little 
need  to  translate  into  terms  of  intellect  the  facts 
of  the  inward  experience.  His  interest  and  effort 
were  all  discharged  upon  the  experience  itself. 
Accordingly,  we  shall  look  in  vain  for  formal 
definitions  in  the  Bible.  We  do  find  in  the  Old 
Testament  concrete  descriptions  of  the  ideal  life, 
as  in  Micah:  He  hath  shown  thee,  O  man,  what 


WHAT  IS  RELIGION?  93 

is  good;  and  what  doth  the  Lord  require  of  thee, 
but  to  do  justly,  and  to  love  mercy,  and  to  walk 
humbly  with  thy  God?  And  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment Jesus'  condensation  of  the  law  and  the  proph- 
ets into  the  one  word  love,  and  James'  picture 
of  genuine  religion  as  kindness  and  purity,  occur 
to  one  at  once.  But  these  are  not  definitions. 
This  absence  of  theorizing  about  religion  in  the 
very  literature  which  has  come  to  be  the  support 
and  the  authority  of  the  religious  life,  is  full  of 
instruction  for  our  hair-splitting  Western  race, 
which,  in  its  eagerness  to  be  logical,  sometimes 
forgets  to  be  good.  It  is  precisely  this  habit  of 
intellectual  review  and  analysis  which  has  brought 
us  into  the  necessity  of  such  a  discussion  as 
the  present.  Centuries  of  reflection  and  de- 
bate have  produced  a  progeny  of  more  or  less 
definite  and  co-ordinate  conceptions  of  religion, 
and  now  that  science  has  come  with  a  new  mental 
brood,  we  have  discovered,  as  we  think,  some  dis- 
cord in  the  family  of  our  ideas,  and  must  set 
about  quieting  the  theoretical  trouble. 

In  the  effort  to  find  the  essential  elements  of 
religion,  observation  of  the  phenomenon  as  it 
actually  occurs  in  the  world  of  mankind  is  ob- 
viously our  first  duty.  Of  course,  to  be  most  use- 
ful the  observation  must  be  as  wide  as  possible. 
The   most   rudimentary   stages   of   the   religious 


94  THE  NEW  PEACE 

development  need  to  be  represented,  as  well  as 
the  most  advanced.  But  it  is  in  regard  to  these 
backward  or  degenerate  forms  of  religion  that  our 
information  is  scantiest  and  most  contradictory. 
The  observers  upon  whose  reports  we  have  to 
rely  have  met  varying  obstacles  among  the  dif- 
ferent peoples  studied  and  have  themselves  been 
variously  equipped  for  their  task.  This  will  ex- 
plain the  greater  part  of  the  divergence  of  their 
reports.  The  chief  obstacle  to  getting  at  the 
heart  of  primitive  religions  is  what  seems  to  be 
a  native  and  universal  reserve  which  shields  the 
inner  life  against  vulgar  intrusion.  It  has  some- 
times been  misinterpreted.  The  silence  of  the 
savage  about  his  religious  conceptions  has  been 
taken  to  mean  that  he  had  nothing  to  communicate, 
and  the  traveler  returns  to  tell  the  world  that  such 
and  such  a  tribe  has  no  religious  ideas  and  sen- 
timents. It  requires  a  more  or  less  prolonged 
intercourse  and  a  thoroughly  sympathetic  bearing 
to  call  out  of  their  hiding  these  intimate  revela- 
tions. Accordingly,  the  missionary  is  as  a  rule 
the  best  observer.  No  one  else  has  the  motive 
which  justifies  the  long  and  kindly  association. 
And  yet  some  missionaries,  handicapped  by  a 
definition  framed  at  home  and  incapable  of  respect 
for  any  so-called  false  religion,  have  been  unable 
to  give  any  reliable  account  of  the  religion  which 


WHAT  IS  RELIGION?  95 

it  was  their  business  to  displace.  The  attitude 
of  Dr.  Nassau  is  the  true  and  hopeful  one. 
When  he  went  forty  years  ago  to  live  among  the 
savage  negroes  of  West  Africa,  he  did  not  think 
it  reasonable,  he  tells  us,  to  dismiss  curtly  as  ab- 
surd the  cherished  sentiments  of  so  large  a  por- 
tion of  the  human  race.  We  are  not  surprised 
to  find  so  rich  a  harvest  of  first-hand,  trustworthy 
observations  in  his  recent  book  on  Fetichism. 

It  need  hardly  be  said  that  the  origin  of  re- 
ligion is  under  the  same  veil  of  mystery  which 
envelops  all  beginnings.  When  the  stream  of 
the  individual  consciousness  took  its  rise,  it  blew 
no  trumpet,  it  set  up  no  stakes,  it  wrote  no  record; 
and  no  man  knows  the  place  of  it.  Even  more 
secret  and  inaccessible  are  the  sources  of  the 
tribal  consciousness,  what  religious  content  they 
held  in  solution,  and  whence  it  was  derived. 
Deeper  still  in  the  irrecoverable  past  lie  the  foun- 
tains of  the  racial  consciousness.  All  that  we  can 
say  of  it  is,  that  where  it  first  emerges  from  the 
mist-wreathed  mountains  of  its  origin  and  comes 
plainly  into  view,  it  is  already  deeply  tinged  with 
religion.  And  yet,  in  spite  of  the  impossibility 
of  getting  at  the  origin  of  religion  to  make  ob- 
servations upon  it,  the  question  is  so  seductive 
that  anthropologists  seem  to  maintain  their  en- 
thusiasm in  research  mainly  in  the  hope  of  being 


96  THE  NEW  PEACE 

able  to  throw  back  upon  it  some  light  from  phe- 
nomena that  are  still  accessible.  The  facts  which 
they  have  observed  suggest,  of  course,  some  hy- 
pothesis of  origin,  but  the  difficulty  is  that  the  hy- 
pothesis cannot  be  put  to  experimental  test.  Its 
highest  justification  is  that  it  accords  with  all  the 
known  facts  of  the  case  and  unifies  them.  It 
cannot  take  rank  as  a  scientific  law,  in  the  sense 
in  which  we  use  that  term;  it  is  only  a  working 
hypothesis. 

One  meets  in  current  discussion  several  of 
these  hypotheses  of  the  origin  of  religion.  There 
is  the  ultra-conservative  theory  of  an  original 
divine  revelation  transmitted  to  the  branching 
races  of  men  by  tradition.  There  is  the  mystic's 
theory  of  a  sixth  sense,  the  sensus  numinis,  intui- 
tive and,  like  reason,  native  to  every  man.  An- 
other theory  supposes  that  the  spiritual  beings 
with  whom  religion  is  concerned  were  simply  the 
projection  of  primitive  man's  own  conscious 
powers  upon  the  mists  of  the  unknown.  The 
theory,  held  by  Herbert  Spencer,  Mr.  Tylor,  and 
most  anthropologists,  known  as  the  "  ghost 
theory,"  supposes  that  primitive  speculation  on 
sleep,  trance,  death,  and  the  human  shapes  seen 
in  dreams,  led  to  the  conception  of  a  phantom  or 
ghost-soul,  separable  from  the  body;  hence,  the 
world  of  spirits  and  ghosts,  and  God  the  greatest 


WHAT  IS  RELIGION?  97 

of  the  ghosts. 

With  this  brief  allusion  we  must  dismiss  all 
these  working  hypotheses  except  the  last.  Permit 
me  to  remind  you  of  the  recent  work  of  Mr. 
Andrew  Lang,1  which  seriously  compromises,  if 
it  does  not  entirely  discredit,  this  hitherto  ortho- 
dox scientific  ghost-theory.  He  finds  amidst  the 
confusion  of  low  savage  faith  a  germ  of  pure, 
though  inarticulate,  religious  belief,  which  in  an 
earlier  stage  may  have  been  even  less  overlaid 
with  fable.  For  example,  the  lowest  of  all  hu- 
man races,  the  Australian,  has  attained  a  religious 
conception  far  above  what  savages  are  usually 
credited  with,  and  it  is  clear  that  he  has  not  done 
so  by  way  of  the  ghost-theory,  for  in  the  Aus- 
tralian's creed  neither  sacrifice  nor  ghost-worship 
has  any  place.  Note  this  Bushman's  confession  to 
a  friend:  "  Cagn  made  all  things,  and  we  pray  to 
him,  O  Cagn,  are  we  not  your  children?  Do 
you  not  see  our  hunger?  Give  us  food."2 
In  Africa,  says  Dr.  Nassau,  belief  in  one  great 
Supreme  Being  is  universal.  He  goes  further 
and  declares  that  during  his  long  residence  among 
the  Western  tribes  he  saw  or  heard  of  none,  even 
among  the  most  degraded,  whose  religious  thought 

1KThe  Making  of  Religion,"  1898;  "Myth,  Ritual  and  Re- 
ligion," 2  ed.,  1899. 

2  Lang,  "Myth,  Ritual  and  Religion,"  II,  36.  Cagn  =  the 
insect,  mantis.     Cf.  Encyc.  Brit.,  11  ed.,  XIX,  135. 


9  8  THE  NEW  PEACE 

was  only  a  superstition.3 

It  was  upon  the  basis  of  such  facts  as  these  that 
Mr.  Lang  reconsidered  his  former  view  which 
coincided  with  Mr.  Tylor's,  and  came  to  look  upon 
a  form  of  theism  as  the  primitive  expression  of  the 
religious  consciousness,  and  furthermore  to  see 
that  the  religion  of  the  lowest  races,  in  its  highest 
form,  does  in  reality  sanction  morality.  He  con- 
fesses that,  like  others,  he  had  thought  savages 
incapable  of  such  relatively  pure  ideas,  but  being 
unable  to  resist  the  evidence,  he  abandoned  his  a 
priori  notions.  His  present  position  he  sum- 
marizes in  these  words:  "  Not  only  the  puzzling 
element  of  myth,  but  the  purer  element  of  religious 
belief  sanctioning  morality  is  derived  by  civilized 
people  from  a  remote  past  of  savagery."  With 
this  general  conclusion  agrees  that  eminent  author- 
ity, the  late  Dr.  Brinton,  who  goes,  indeed,  a  step 
beyond  the  English  writer.  He  feels  no  hesita- 
tion, for  example,  in  saying  that,  while  the  very 
dawn  of  the  religious  consciousness  is  lost  behind 
the  impenetrable  mists  of  the  early  Stone  Age,  its 
explanation  is  simple  and  universal.  For  man  is 
man  whenever  and  wherever  you  find  him.  As 
the  Spy  and  Neanderthal  skulls  are  distinctly 
human  skulls,  so  the  mode  of  mental  action  and 
the  ground  ideas  of  man  are  always  the  same, 

8  Nassau,  "  Fetichism  in  West  Africa,"  36,  38. 


WHAT  IS  RELIGION?  99 

whether  one  discovers  him  swinging  into  place 
the  monoliths  of  Stonehenge  or  suspending  in  mid- 
air the  dome  of  St.  Peter's.  We  may  not  be 
justified  in  holding  with  a  German  ethnologist  the 
extreme  determinist  view  that  the  human  mind 
is  a  machine  which,  supplied  with  "  the  same  ma- 
terials, will  infallibly  grind  out  the  same  product  " ; 
"  we  do  not  think,  thinking  merely  goes  on  within 
us."  But  we  cannot  refuse  to  accept  the  mass  of 
ethnological  evidence  now  at  hand  pointing  to  the 
idenity  of  mental  construction  and  action  from  the 
earliest  and.  rudest  type  down  to  the  latest  and 
highest.  "  The  same  laws  of  growth  which  de- 
velop the  physical  man  everywhere  into  the  traits 
of  the  species  act  also  on  his  psychical  powers,  and 
not  less  absolutely,  to  bring  their  products  into 
conformity."  This  simple  fact  explains  the  strik- 
ing similarity  in  primitive  religious  ideas.  We 
have  no  need  to  invoke  either  historic  connection 
or  tradition  from  a  common  ancestry.  The  mind 
of  man  reacting  in  practically  the  same  way  to  the 
same  stimuli  will  everywhere  reach  fundamentally 
identical  conceptions.  This  is  true  of  the  realm 
of  the  arts  and  institutions  no  less  than  of  religion. 
Now,  what  is  the  fundamental  and  therefore 
universal  reaction  of  the  human  mind  in  the  midst 
of  the  manifold  forms  and  ordered  activities  of 
the  natural  world?     It  is,  in  Dr.  Brinton's  words, 


ioo  THE  NEW  PEACE 

the  recognition  "  that  conscious  volition  is  the 
ultimate  source  of  all  force.  It  is  the  belief  that 
behind  the  sensuous,  phenomenal  world,  distinct 
from  it,  giving  it  form,  existence,  and  activity,  lies 
the  ultimate,  invisible,  immeasurable  power  of 
mind,  of  conscious  Will,  of  Intelligence,  analogous 
in  some  way  to  our  own ;  and, —  mark  this  essential 
corollary,  that  man  is  in  communication  with  it"  4 
This  recognition  or  assumption  is  at  the  founda- 
tion of  all  the  spontaneous  or  primitive  religions, 
and,  with  the  curious  exception  of  Buddhism  which 
is  less  a  religion  that  an  ethical  philosophy,  like- 
wise of  the  founded  or  salvation  religions.  From 
this  point  of  view  the  significance  of  Jesus  lies  in 
the  personal  revelation  which  he  made  of  the 
abstract  universal  Intelligence  as  being  in  sympa- 
thetic neighborhood  to  human  need,  and  in  his 
clearing  the  way  for  freer  commerce  with  the  un- 
seen. As  Paul  expressed  it,  "  God  was  in  Christ 
reconciling  the  world  unto  Himself."  Jesus'  com- 
panions and  interpreters  felt  that  they  had  heard, 
had  seen  with  their  eyes,  and  had  handled  with 
their  hands  somewhat  of  the  eternal  Life,  and  that 
through  Him  they  had  a  freshened  fellowship  with 
the  Father.5 

4Brinton,   "Religions  of   Primitive   Peoples,"  47. 
6  I  Jno.,  1  :i-3. 


CRISIS  101 

The  Religious  Crisis 

This  general  survey  of  the  religous  phenomenon 
brings  into  view  its  universal  elements, —  what 
may  be  called  the  religious  element  proper  and  the 
mythical  element.  The  distinctively  religious  ele- 
ment is  that  which  recognizes  and  opens  corre- 
spondence with  the  unseen  Powers.  The  mythical 
element  taking  objective  expression  in  ritual  is  the 
product  of  the  religious.  It  speculates  about  the 
world  of  the  Powers,  and  is  invariably  responsible 
for  the  religious  crisis.  Its  elaboration  of  animis- 
tic ideas  and  beliefs  sometimes  overflows  the  purer 
germ  of  religion  and  supersedes  it.  For  there 
seems  to  be  little  check  upon  this  primitive  fancy 
and  speculation.  In  West  Africa,  for  example, 
where  "  any  system  of  atheism  strikes  the  people 
as  too  absurd  for  denial,"  God  is  supposed  to  have 
withdrawn  from  the  world  after  creating  it  and  to 
have  allowed  it  to  fall  under  the  control  of  evil 
spirits.  It  is  only  to  these  evil  spirits,  accordingly, 
that  worship  is  paid.  The  people  say,  "  God  is  far 
from  us.  He  does  not  help  or  harm  us.  Why 
should  we  care  for  him?  "  6  Here  the  mythical 
factor  is  supreme  in  the  religious  life,  and  its 
speculations  cannot  escape  the  criticism  of  a  higher 
culture  so  soon  as  it  arises. 

6  Nassau,  "  Fetichism  in  West  Africa,"  38,  39. 


102  THE  NEW  PEACE 

The  case  of  the  religion  of  the  ancient  Greeks 
is  a  more  instructive  example,  because  in  it  the  de- 
velopment went  forward  to  a  further  phase,  which 
is  analogous  to  the  current  situation  of  Christian- 
ity. The  brooding  of  the  poetic  imagination  upon 
the  central  conceptions  of  religion  generated  in 
the  course  of  time  the  intricate  mythology  of  the 
heroes  and  Olympian  divinities.  It  is  these  very 
personal  and  vital  men  and  women,  gods  and 
goddesses,  of  whom  we  read  in  Homer.  The  poet 
does  not  discuss  abstractions  and  general  prin- 
ciples, nor  define  the  relation  of  the  divine  world 
to  the  human.  He  writes  the  glowing  history  of 
very  real  personages  in  the  midst  of  whose  struggle 
on  the  plain  flash  to  and  fro  the  no  less  real 
Athene  and  Ares  and  Aphrodite  for  guidance  or 
for  succor.  The  pale  cast  of  thought,  we  may  be 
thankful,  came  later.  But  it  came.  With  the  rise 
of  abstract  reflection  the  poet  and  his  beautiful 
creations  had  to  face  the  critic.  It  was  inevitable. 
For  the  essential  content  of  the  religious  con- 
sciousness is  always  at  war  with  the  particular  and 
limited  form  in  which  it  happens  to  find  expres- 
sion. Criticism,  at  first  in  alliance  with  this  es- 
sence, exposes  the  unreality  of  the  form,  under- 
mines the  mythology,  objecting  that  it  lowers  the 
spiritual  to  the  level  of  the  natural;  and  then,  upon 
the  destruction  of  the  form,  it  begins  to  question 


CRISIS  103 

the  existence  of  the  spiritual  essence  itself. 
"  Superstition  bowing  down  before  an  idol,  just 
as  an  idol,  provokes  the  unbelief  which  refuses 
to  worship  even  the  god.  And  rationalism  which 
begins  by  pointing  out  that  the  myth  is  not  true  as 
the  expression  of  a  simple  fact,  ends  in  the  denial 
that  there  can  ever  be  anything  more  than  a  simple 
fact  to  express."  7 

The  critical  era  for  Greece  came  with  the  clos- 
ing years  of  the  fifth  century  B.C.  A  new  national 
experience  combined  with  the  rise  of  abstract 
thought  to  produce  the  widespread  skepticism  of 
the  Sophistic  movement,  which  involved  not  merely 
religious  beliefs  but  all  knowledge  "  in  one  gen- 
eral web  of  distrust."  The  Sophists  after  laying 
bare  the  emptiness  of  the  popular  faith,  coldly 
turned  their  backs  on  all  religion  and  gave  atten- 
tion solely  to  preparing  their  pupils  for  achiev- 
ing a  successful  practical  career. 

The  modern  counterpart  of  this  development  is 
the  rise  and  dominance  of  the  mediaeval  theology 
and  the  critical  movement  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury known  as  the  Enlightenment,  continued  in  the 
nineteenth  century  as  Positivism  or  the  disillusion- 
ment of  science.  One  of  the  most  striking  facts  in 
the  history  of  Christianity  is  the  increasing  ob- 
scuration of  its  inner  life  and  essence  down  to  a  re- 

*  Caird,  "  Evolution  of  Religion,"  I,  298. 


io4  THE  NEW  PEACE 

cent  period.  According  to  Jesus,  religion,  u  e.  His 
religion,  is  love  to  God  and  man.  According  to 
His  brother  and  apostolic  interpreter,  it  is  purity 
and  kindness.  According  to  the  most  gifted  and 
influential  of  His  successors,  Christ  Himself,  in 
His  own  person,  is  all  and  in  all.  In  other  words, 
the  essence  of  Christianity  is  an  inward  disposition, 
not  an  external  connection.  It  is  a  personal  at- 
tachment, not  subscription  to  intellectual  proposi- 
tions. It  is  a  close  and  easy  correspondence  with 
the  Father  through  Christ,  who  came  out  from 
Him  to  dwell  among  us  and  returned  to  Him  bear- 
ing our  confidence  and  love,  "  the  grandeur  God  " 
becoming  for  us  "  the  comfort  Christ."  But  the 
historic  development  has  been  away  from  this 
fundamental  conception.  The  mythical  factor 
came  early  into  play,  and  inasmuch  as  men  had 
long  before  found  their  way  into  the  world  of 
abstractions,  this  mythical  factor,  which  in  a  rude 
or  poetic  people  had  elaborated  ancestor-worship, 
or  fetichism,  or  a  rich  mythology,  now  exercised 
itself  mainly  in  the  creation  of  a  complex  ritual 
and  a  co-ordinated  body  of  doctrine.  Indeed, 
a  distinguished  European  ethnologist  declares  that 
even  fetichism  is  by  no  means  unknown  to-day  to 
Catholic  Christianity  and  its  cult.  The  church, 
Western  and  Eastern,  builds  about  itself  a  high 
thorny  hedge  of  so-called  articles  of  faith  chosen 


CRISIS  105 

after  hot  debates  in  councils  and  synods,  and 
then  with  a  serene  authority  declares  that  there 
is  no  salvation  for  those  on  the  outside.  Tol- 
stoy's faith  in  the  church  was  chiefly  shattered, 
so  he  says,  by  its  indifference  to  what  was  essential 
in  Jesus'  teachings  and  its  avidity  for  what  was  of 
secondary  importance.  Is  the  lapse  from  the  con- 
ception of  Jesus  less  real  in  Protestant  Christian- 
ity? From  being  a  renewed  life,  has  it  not  been 
largely  transformed  into  the  acceptance  of  a  body 
of  religious  beliefs?  What  but  this  can  be  the 
meaning  of  the  perplexity  of  an  American  theolo- 
gian held  in  the  highest  regard  by  us  all?  "  When 
I  think,"  said  he  a  few  months  ago,  "  how  little 
Peter  and  James  and  John,  on  the  banks  of  the 
Jordan  at  the  beginning  of  Christ's  ministry,  knew 
about  Christian  doctrine,  I  am  amazed  that  they 
should  have  been  counted  among  His  disciples.  If 
you  had  asked  them  about  the  deity  of  Christ,  or 
about  the  atonement,  they  would  not  have  under- 
stood the  meaning  of  your  words."  He  is  able 
to  resolve  the  incongruity  only  by  suggesting  with 
an  interesting  and  artless  candor  that  "  all  Christ- 
ian doctrine  was  latent  in  their  obedience."  8  And 
is  not  our  militant  denominationalism  another  ex- 
pression of  the  same  lapse?  Tests  which  are 
purely  intellectual  are  applied  at  the  entrance  of 

8  Strong,  "  Our  Denominational  Outlook,"  1904,  pp.  21,  22. 


106  THE  NEW  PEACE 

very  many  Christian  communions,  and  the  discredit 
of  erroneous  opinions  sometimes  extends  beyond 
the  ecclesiastical  close  to  bar  admission  to  other 
associative  groupings.  Mr.  Justin  McCarthy  re- 
calls the  fact  that  about  1872  one  of  the  most  in- 
fluential of  the  London  journals  sneered  at  the 
Parliamentary  candidature  of  Professor  Fawcett, 
on  the  ground  that  he  was  a  man  who,  as  a  believer 
in  the  Darwinian  theory,  admitted  that  his  great 
grandfather  was  a  frog.  One  must  think  "  right  " 
at  the  peril  of  one's  salvation  both  in  this  life  and 
that  which  is  to  come.  If  one  think  "  right,"  the 
Powers  will  relax  somewhat  the  demand  for  good- 
ness. Such  a  requisition  would  not  seem  to  be 
particularly  severe  upon  so  superlative  rational 
powers  as  Augustine  had,  or  Calvin,  or  St. 
Thomas,  or  John  Stuart  Mill.  But  what  would  be- 
come of  us  ordinary  mortals,  who  can  hardly  be 
brought  to  think  at  all?  In  the  Journal  of 
Eugenie  de  Guerin  we  read  of  the  arrest  and 
condemnation  to  burning  of  a  poor  shepherdess 
who  carried  off  in  her  apron  the  blessed  sacrament 
from  an  empty  church  and  placed  it  under  a  rose- 
tree  in  the  wood.  When  about  to  die  she  con- 
fessed to  a  priest  that  she  only  wanted  to  have  the 
blessed  sacrament  in  the  forest.  "  I  thought," 
she  said,  "  the  good  God  would  be  as  satisfied  un- 
der a   rose-tree  as   on  an  altar."     But  she  was 


CRISIS  107 

burnt.  And  of  what  account  was  the  consecra- 
tion of  the  simple-hearted  colored  preacher  whom 
I  knew,  if  along  with  it  he  had  not  been  "  sound  " 
in  doctrine?  In  terms  not  altogether  pleasing  to 
an  over-refined  taste,  he  said  one  day:  "  I  jes' 
feel  like  I  must  go  to  Africky  as  a  missionary. 
An'  ef  them  men-eaters  gits  me,  it'll  be  all  right. 
Eben  out'n  ole  George's  hash  thar'll  rise  up  a 
sweet  savor  unto  de  Lord  dat'll  glorify  his  blessed 
name." 

Let  me  give  you  in  some  detail  for  its  illustra- 
tive value  the  twelfth-century  French  legend  of 
"  Our  Lady's  Tumbler."  It  is  the  story  of  a 
travelling  minstrel  who  grew  weary  of  the  world 
and  entered  the  monastery  in  Clairvaux.  He  had 
spent  his  life  in  tumbling,  leaping,  and  dancing, 
and  knew  nothing  else, —  no  paternoster,  no  chant, 
no  credo,  no  ave,  nor,  in  the  language  of  the 
legend,  "  aught  that  might  make  for  his  salva- 
tion." He  was  abashed  among  the  priests,  dea- 
cons, sub-deacons,  and  acolytes,  who  all  had  tasks 
in  season,  while  he  was  able  to  do  nothing  suitable 
to  so  holy  a  place.  In  his  grief  he  came  one  day 
upon  a  crypt  in  the  monastery  where  was  an  altar 
and  above  it  the  form  of  the  Holy  Mary.  The 
signal  for  the  Mass  sounded,  and  he  was  dis- 
mayed. "Ah!"  he  cried;  "now  each  will  say 
his  stave,  and  here  am  I  like  a  tethered  ox,  doing 


108  THE  NEW  PEACE 

naught  but  browse. —  Shall  I  say  it?  Shall  I  do 
it  ?  By  the  Mother  of  God,  I  will !  I  shall  ne'er 
be  blamed  for  it,  if  I  do  what  I  have  learned,  and 
serve  the  Mother  of  God  in  her  monastery  accord- 
ing to  my  trade.  The  rest  serve  in  chanting,  and 
I  will  serve  in  tumbling."  Laying  off  his  cloak, 
he  takes  his  stand  right  humbly  before  the  image. 
"  Lady,"  says  he,  "  to  your  protection  I  com- 
mend my  body  and  my  soul.  Sweet  queen,  sweet 
Lady,  despise  not  what  I  know.  I  can  nor  chant 
nor  read  to  you;  but,  certes,  I  would  pick  for  you  a 
choice  of  all  my  finest  feats."  Then  he  began 
his  leaping  and  tumbling  and  dancing,  at  intervals 
throwing  himself  on  his  knees  before  the  image 
to  salute  and  adore  it.  He  arose  and  in  festal 
guise  made  the  vault  of  Metz  around  his  head,  and 
turned  and  saluted  the  image.  Then  he  did  the 
French  vault,  and  the  vault  of  Lorraine,  and  then 
the  Roman  vault,  and  with  his  hand  before  his 
brow  he  danced  most  featly  as  he  gazed  humbly  at 
the  image.  "  Lady,"  he  said,  "  this  is  a  choice 
performance.  I  do  it  for  no  other  but  for  you  and 
your  son.  And  it  is  no  play  work.  But  I  am 
serving  you  for  your  disport,  and  that  pays  me. 
Lady,  despise  not  your  slave."  When  he  heard 
them  raise  the  chants,  he  laid  to  in  right  good  earn- 
est, and  as  long  as  the  Mass  lasted  he  ceased  not 
until  he  dropped  upon  the  ground  for  weariness. 


CRISIS  109 

"  Lady,"  he  said,  "  I  can  do  no  more  now;  but,  in- 
deed, I  will  come  again.  Adieu,  sweetest  friend. 
What  pity  that  I  know  not  all  those  psalters! 
Right  gladly  would  I  say  them  for  love  of  you." 
This  life  the  good  man  led  long  time  in  secret. 
At  last  the  Abbot  witnessed  one  day  all  the  min- 
strel's office,  and  when  it  closed  he  saw  a  glorious 
iDame  descend  from  the  vault  with  angels  to  sus- 
tain and  solace  her  exhausted  servant.  The 
mediaeval  writer,  with  the  simplicity  and  true  re- 
ligious instinct  which  shine  all  the  brighter  for  the 
elaborate  formalism  and  official  theologies  of  the 
time,  thus  points  the  moral  of  the  story:  "  God 
rejects  no  one  who  comes  to  him  in  love,  of  what- 
ever trade  he  be,  if  only  he  love  God  and  do 
right." 

Thus  the  simple  devout.  But  the  great  leaders 
—  what  of  them?  No  clearness  of  spiritual 
vision,  no  shining  of  the  face  of  prayer,  no  depth 
of  the  hunger  for  righteousness,  no  mounting  up 
of  the  passion  for  perfection,  no  brightness  and 
purity  of  life  recovering  the  stained  and  the  stum- 
bling, no  strength  of  hand  for  blessed  ministries, 
can  set  at  rights,  or  make  amends  for,  a  slip  in  doc- 
trine. My  Lady  Macbeth,  Theology,  or,  if  you 
prefer,  Ecclesiasticism,  finds  it  hard  to  wash  out 
the  stain  of  blood  shed  for  opinion's  sake,  and  all 
Araby's  spices  cannot  sweeten  that  hand  again. 


no  THE  NEW  PEACE 

And  the  horrible  business  of  religious  persecution 
is  not  finished  yet.  I  greatly  fear  that  not  all  the 
Johannes  Agricolas  have  yet  "  laid  their  spirits 
down  at  last  in  God's  breast,"  but  some  remain 
with  us  who,  at  the  demand  of  the  dogma,  com- 
placently might  — 

Gaze  below  on  hell's  fierce  bed, 

And  those  its  waves  of  flame  oppress. 

Priest,  doctor,  hermit,  monk  grown  white 

With  prayer,  the  broken-hearted  nun, 

The  martyr,  the  wan  acolyte, 

The  incense-swinging  child, —  undone 

Before  God  fashioned  star  or  sun! 

God,  whom  I  praise;  how  could  I  praise, 

If  such  as  I  might  understand? 

We  have  seen  that  the  mythical  factor  co-exists 
with  the  religious  factor  in  the  rudest  as  well  as 
in  the  most  advanced  religions.  It  finds  expres- 
sion now  in  an  exuberant  animism  or  mythology, 
now  in  ritual,  now  in  dogma.  In  the  case  of 
Christianity,  its  Hebrew  ancestry  imposed  some 
checks  upon  the  universal  tendency  to  speculate 
about  the  content  of  the  religious  consciousness. 
Accordingly,  in  its  earliest  forms  the  moral  and 
spiritual  elements  allowed  little  place  for  the  re- 
flective. As  late,  indeed,  as  the  close  of  the  sec- 
ond century  Celsus,  the  first  pagan  critic  of  the 
new  religion,  repeats  as  a  reproach  practically  the 
same  thing  which  Paul  had  counted  a  distinction 


CRISIS  in 

of  the  Gospel, — "  not  many  wise  men  after  the 
flesh  are  called."  But  when  once  Christianity, 
spreading  beyond  Hebraism,  came  into  living  con- 
tact with  the  Hellenic  culture,  the  obstruction  of 
racial  inaptitude  and  the  restraint  of  Jesus'  own 
teaching  were  no  longer  operative,  and,  as  Pro- 
fessor Edwin  Hatch  declared,  within  a  century  and 
a  half  after  this  first  contact,  the  ideas  and 
methods  of  philosophy  flowed  in  such  mass  into 
Christianity  as  to  make  it  no  less  a  philosophy  than 
a  religion.9  It  is  not  unlikely  that  the  speculating 
tendency  received  additional  stimulus  as  well  as 
materials  from  the  Pauline  letters,  which  for  the 
most  part  arose  out  of  the  necessity  which  was 
upon  him  to  vindicate  his  Gospel  by  dialectical 
methods  before  the  bar  of  Jewish  learning.  A 
transient  necessity  was  misinterpreted  as  establish- 
ing an  authoritative  precedent  and  fixing  the  em- 
phasis where  it  does  not  belong. 

Now,  the  historic  eclipse  of  the  vital,  personal, 
practical  idea  of  Jesus,  this  shifting  of  the  empha- 
sis of  the  Christian  experience  from  life  to  opinion, 
led  directly  to  the  superstitions,  the  formal  creeds, 
the  extravagancies,  and  tyrannies  which  precipi- 
tated the  eighteenth  century  crisis  of  the  Enlight- 
enment and  the  nineteenth  century  crisis  of  the 

9  Hatch,    "  Influence   of    Greek    Ideas    and    Usages    upon   the 
Christian    Church,"    125. 


ii2  THE  NEW  PEACE 

scientific  criticism.  Only  the  latter  concerns  us 
here.  It  was  inevitable.  For  the  elaboration  of 
opinion  under  religious  sanction  ranged  over  well- 
nigh  the  whole  world  of  fact.  It  involved  cos- 
mogony, ethnology,  and  history.  It  had  its  theory 
of  the  earth  and  of  the  heavens,  of  disease,  of 
language,  of  education.  But  all  those  matters 
were  manifestly  within  the  scope  of  science  and 
subject  to  its  revision. 

The  first  contact  of  the  new  natural  knowledge 
with  the  body  of  religious  opinions  was  in  many 
serious  minds  disastrous.  The  great  scientific 
generalizations  mentioned  in  the  first  lecture  at 
fundamental  points  antagonized  squarely  the 
world-view  which  had  grown  up  under  the  sanction 
and  protection  of  Christianity.  They  date  this 
side  of  1830.  The  next  decade  is  the  precise 
period  when  the  ghost  of  doubt  begins  to  haunt 
the  heights  of  English  culture.  Here  begins  what 
has  been  called  the  modern  tragedy  of  opinion. 
It  is  just  then  that  Carlyle  cries  out  bitterly, 
11  Nothing,  or  almost  nothing  is  certain  to  me !  " 
Froude  says  that  he  and  a  band  of  companion 
truth-seekers  were  driven  to  the  wilderness  in 
search  of  some  certainty  on  which  they  might  rest. 
Tennyson,  in  his  poetic  seclusion,  had  moments 
of  dark  misgiving,  when  he  could  only  "  stretch 
lame  hands  to  God,"  and  "  trust  that  somehow 


CRISIS  113 

Good  will  be  the  final  goal  of  111."  Francis  New- 
man and  George  Eliot  in  these  same  revolutionary 
years  bade  adieu  to  their  ardent  evangelicanism. 
Matthew  Arnold's  early  poems,  tinged  with  the 
sad  beauty  of  a  pagan  despair,  bear  testimony  to 
the  stress  of  the  time,  when,  as  he  complains, 

The  old  is  out  of  date; 
The  new  is  not  yet  born. 

And  Arthur  Clough's  devout  fine  spirit  returned 
no  more  to  port  from  drifting  on  the  ocean  of 
doubt.10 

If  the  religious  life  itself  did  not  suffer  asphyxia 
in  these  and  other  gifted  minds,  religious  beliefs 
underwent  serious  disintegration,  and  in  some  of 
them  were  swept  entirely  away.  A  storm  was  on 
the  high  seas,  and  many  a  fair  sail  that  ventured 
into  it  split  and  sunk,  and  many  that  lived  through 
it  bore  ever  afterwards  the  marks  of  its  distress. 
But  it  could  not  have  been  otherwise.  Is  not  the 
way  of  light  always  a  narrow  way  beset  with 
fatal  perils?  An  ocean  without  storms  is  an 
ocean  without  life,  and  some  craft  must  go  down 
if  any  are  to  sail.  Human  nature  is  so  constituted 
that  it  must  struggle  into  its  larger  hopes,  and  it  is 
an  inevitable  incident  that  some  perish  in  the 
transition.     The  pain  and  peril  of  such  a  time  are 

10  Cf.  Tullock,  "  Movements  of  Religious  Thought  in 
Britain,"  Ch.  VII. 


ii4  THE  NEW  PEACE 

none  the  less  real  when  they  are  scientifically  ex- 
plained; but  they  become  less  terrifying.  We 
now  recognize  them  as  growing  pains,  as  due  to 
the  less  successful  efforts  of  the  religious  con- 
sciousness to  adjust  itself  to  a  new  situation. 
New,  i.  e.,  to  the  existing  religious  consciousness. 
As  we  have  heretofore  noted,  in  the  historical 
development  of  religion  such  a  crisis  is  not  new. 
11  It  hath  been  already  in  the  ages  which  were 
before  us."  The  external  situation  which  precipi- 
tates the  crisis  is  all  that  varies  from  age  to  age. 
And  even  these  situations,  as  we  have  seen,  have 
the  common  character  of  a  widened  experience, 
which  wakes  up  the  critical  faculty  to  review  the 
creations  of  fancy  and  speculation  grown  up  in 
the  interval  of  its  dormancy. 

Of  course,  from  the  view-point  of  those  who 
speak  authoritatively  for  religion,  the  critic  is  the 
heretic  or  the  infidel,  according  to  the  extent  of  his 
negations.  And  every  religion  which  has  reached 
the  stage  of  criticism,  and  every  time  such  a  stage 
is  repeated,  can  show  examples  of  this  interesting 
person.  Sometimes,  like  the  prophet  of  the 
ancient  Hebrew  religion,  he  is  gifted  with  origi- 
nality and  insight,  and  shatters  the  forms  of  wor- 
ship to  save  the  heart  of  it.  Sometimes,  like 
Socrates  in  the  Greek  crisis,  your  infidel  repudiates 
a  poetical  mythology  and  introduces  the  spiritual 


HERETIC  115 

conception  of  the  Divine  Being  in  the  market- 
place, endangering  the  traditional  rites  on  which 
the  fortunes  of  the  State  depend.  Or,  like 
Lucretius  in  the  Roman  crisis  and  Haeckel  in  the 
nineteenth  century  crisis,  in  the  name  of  science  he 
rejects  all  religion  along  with  a  particular  expres- 
sion of  religion  which  he  has  identified  with  its  es- 
sence. And  now  it  is  Marcion  of  the  second  cen- 
tury, a  man  of  deep  religious  character,  who  re- 
volts from  the  mixture  in  current  Christianity  of 
eclectic  paganism  and  Gnostic  speculation,  and 
makes  the  first  rupture  of  the  dogmatic  unity  of  the 
church  on  the  issue  of  the  return  to  the  simplicity 
of  the  original  Gospel.  Or  it  is  that  apostle  of  the 
eighteenth  century  Enlightenment,  Voltaire,  that 
incarnated  smile,  who,  disgusted  and  indignant  at 
the  bigotry  and  injustice  of  organized  Christianity, 
upon  the  monstrous  death  of  the  poor  Huguenot 
by  priestly  authority,  raised  in  behalf  of  outraged 
humanity  a  defiant  shout  which  well-nigh  shook  to 
its  ruin  every  religious  establishment  in  Europe. 
He  built  a  church  on  his  estate  and,  in  impatience 
at  the  endless  list  of  saints  to  whom  most  churches 
were  dedicated,  he,  in  his  own  person,  dedicated 
this  simply  to  God;  we  read  of  his  communing 
in  it  later.  And  when  the  Lisbon  earthquake  shat- 
tered not  only  houses,  but  over  a  wider  area  the 
faith  of  many,  who  but  this  smiling  infidel  uttered 


n6  THE  NEW  PEACE 

the  call  to  faith  in  an  inscrutable  Providence  in 
view  of  that  catastrophe?  And  yet  the  uncritical 
tradition  of  Roman  Catholic  abuse  spreads  be- 
yond that  communion  and  comes  down  to  our  own 
day.  And  I  should  like  to  speak  of  the  pugna- 
cious Professor  Huxley  of  the  keen  rapier,  who 
more  than  once  made  life  uncomfortable  for  Eng- 
lish bishops  —  Professor  Huxley  working  in  his 
old  age  on  a  Bible  story-book  for  children,  and 
possessing,  according  to  an  extravagant  friend,11 
enough  real  Christianity  to  save  every  man, 
woman,  and  child  in  the  British  Isles,  with  plenty 
to  spare. 

But  I  wish  to  speak  more  particularly  of  two 
other  cases,  and  from  the  point  of  view  of  their 
own  inward  experience.  The  first  is  the  deeply 
instructive  experience  of  one  of  the  most  eminent 
of  contemporary  biologists  and  psychologists. 
The  late  Professor  Romanes  made  years  ago  a 
severely  rational  and  candid  examination  of 
theism,  and  reached  sadly  a  wholly  negative  re- 
sult. And  yet  with  his  own  unanswered  argu- 
ments before  him,  his  deeper  nature  rebelled 
against  the  deliverance  of  his  reason,  and  still  cried 
out  after  God,  reminding  us  of  what  Dr.  Johnson 
once  said  about  the  appearance  of  a  man's  spirit 
after  his  death,  "  All  argument  is  against  it,  but 

11  Cf.  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  Feb.,  1901,  p.  283. 


HERETIC  117 

all  belief  is  for  it."  There  were  times  when 
Romanes'  habitual  repression  of  these  deeper  long- 
ings relaxed  and  he  poured  his  heart  out  in  the 
tenderest  of  poetic  appeals.  Read  his  sonnet  be- 
ginning "  I  ask  not  for  thy  love,  O  Lord,"  and 
closing  with  these  words: 

I  ask  not  for  Thy  love ;  nor  e'en  so  much 
As  for  a  hope  on  Thy  dear  breast  to  lie; 

But  be  Thou  still  my  shepherd  —  still  with  such 
Compassion  as  may  melt  to  such  a  cry; 

That  so  I  hear  Thy  feet,  and  feel  Thy  touch, 
And  dimly  see  Thy  face,  ere  yet  I  die. 

He  meditated  deeply  on  this  antithesis  in  his  own 
nature.  He  lived  to  resolve  it.  Only  two  months 
before  his  death  he  wrote  to  a  friend, —  what 
seems  to  have  goaded  Haeckel  into  an  unworthy 
effort  to  discredit  the  validity  of  the  experience, 
—  that  he  was  beginning  to  see  the  truth  that  logi- 
cal processes  are  not  the  only  means  of  knowledge 
in  transcendental  regions.  In  his  remarkable 
posthumous  notes  on  religion,  he  declares  that 
reason  is  not  the  only  attribute  of  man  nor  the 
only  faculty  for  the  ascertainment  of  truth;  that 
the  moral  and  spiritual  faculties  are  of  no  less  im- 
portance. In  the  rational  sphere  he  was  critical 
and  agnostic;  in  the  sphere  of  essential  religion 
he  was  devout  and  responsive.  With  the  vivid 
recognition  of  the  necessity  of  faith  and  of  the 


n8  THE  NEW  PEACE 

legitimacy  and  value  of  its  intuitions,  he  died  in 
full  and  deliberate  communion  with  the  church  of 
Jesus  Christ. 

Consider  now  the  experience  of  a  Biblical  critic 
of  the  first  rank,  the  historian  of  the  origins  of 
Christianity.  In  that  remote  and  wild  district  of 
northwest  France,  Brittany,  there  is  a  popular 
legend  of  an  imaginary  town  called  Is  which  was 
swallowed  up  by  the  sea  long  ago.  The  fisher- 
men say  that  the  tops  of  its  church  spires  can  be 
seen  in  the  hollows  of  the  waves  when  the  sea  is 
rough,  and  in  calm  weather  the  music  of  its  church 
bells  may  be  heard  above  the  waters.  The  famous 
critic  Renan,  whose  youth  was  spent  in  this 
region,  says:  "  I  often  fancy  that  I  have  at  the 
bottom  of  my  heart  a  city  of  Is  with  its  bells  call- 
ing to  prayer  a  recalcitrant  congregation."  12 
Who  will  say  that  this  brilliant  man's  relation  to 
Christianity  would  not  have  been  the  reverse  of 
what  it  was,  if  the  Christianity  of  Brittany  had 
found  the  expression  suited  to  the  time?  Was  it 
not  the  outworn  and  lifeless  form  of  it  which, 
though  it  aroused  no  questionings  in  the  simple 
life  of  Brittany,  was  found  to  be  incompatible  with 
the  fuller  light  of  his  Paris  experience?  And 
was  not  the  confounding  of  essence  with  form,  of 
faith  with  intellectual  assent  to  dogma,  responsi- 

12  Renan,  "  Recollections  of  My  Youth,"  Preface. 


HERETIC  119 

ble  for  the  tension  and  pain  of  his  first  misgivings? 
On  the  one  hand,  he  declares  that  Christianity 
is  dead  and  nothing  can  be  done  for  it  until  it  is 
transformed.13  On  the  other  hand,  he  writes 
again  to  his  friend  the  great  chemist,  writes  from 
Rome,  whose  tranquillity  and  supernatural  fascina- 
tion had  so  completely  changed  him  that  he  was  no 
longer  French  and  no  longer  the  critic.  "  You 
know,"  says  he,  "  that  religious  impressions  are 
very  potent  with  me  and  that  as  a  result  of  my 
education  they  mingle  in  an  undefinable  propor- 
tion with  the  most  mysterious  instincts  of  my 
nature.  These  impressions  have  awakened  here 
with  an  energy  that  I  cannot  describe  to  you."  14 
When  he  says  in  the  "  Recollections,"  "  I  feel  that 
in  reality  my  existence  is  governed  by  a  faith  which 
I  no  longer  possess,"  does  he  not  really  bear  un- 
conscious witness  to  the  persistence  of  faith  in 
spite  of  the  vanishing  of  many  beliefs?  Dogmas 
fall  into  discredit  before  his  critical  faculty;  but 
does  he  not  retain  his  early  sense  of  God  and  the 
eternal  things?  And  those  bells  of  Is  ringing 
even  in  his  last  years  in  the  depths  of  his  being, — 
what  are  they  but  the  echoes  of  the  spiritual  sphere 
still  caught  by  the  ear  of  a  living  faith  through 
the  clamors  of  the  skeptical  reason?  the  bond  of 

13  "  Letters  from  the  Holy  Land,"  8. 

14  Id,   34. 


120  THE  NEW  PEACE 

the  unseen  world,  strained  perhaps  but  still  un- 
broken? I  do  not  undertake  to  say  how  far  one 
may  go  in  the  denial  of  intellectual  propositions 
on  religious  subjects  without  losing  the  vision  of 
God,  which  is  the  essence  of  faith. 

Indeed,  such  a  question  is  beside  the  present 
purpose.  I  advance  no  apologetic  in  behalf  of 
these  great  names.  They  all,  Hebrew,  pagan. 
Christian,  interest  us  in  this  connection  only  be- 
cause they  show  how,  in  all  religions  alike,  the 
advent  of  criticism  precipitates  the  irrepressible 
conflict  over  the  varied  forms  in  which  the  reli- 
gious principle  expresses  itself  in  life,  and  because 
they  illustrate  the  different  issues  of  that  conflict 
in  personal  experience. 

But  the  crisis  passes.  Out  of  the  shadows  the 
religious  life  emerges  unruffled,  deep;  for  it  was 
only  the  outworks  and  appurtenances  of  religion 
that  were  involved  in  the  struggle.  Some  of  these 
it  is  better  to  surrender.  When  this  distinction  is 
recognized  the  tension  has  already  begun  to  relax. 
As  regards  our  own  crisis,  we  may  grant  that  the 
Gospel  in  its  origin  was  connected  with  a  view  of 
the  world  which  the  progress  of  science  makes 
impossible  for  us.  The  Gospel  itself  does  not 
thereby  become  impossible  for  us.  As  says  Har- 
nack,  its  essential  elements  are  timeless,  and  the 
man  to  whom  it  addresses  itself  is  also  timeless 


TRIUMPH  121 

in  the  sense  that  no  progress  which  he  makes 
ever  changes  his  inmost  constitution  or  his  funda- 
mental relations.  "  Since  that  is  so,  this  Gospel 
remains  in  force,  then,  for  us  too."  In  its  pass- 
age into  the  wider  horizons  of  modern  science, 
painful  though  it  has  been,  the  Gospel  has  given 
the  latest  demonstration  of  its  inherent  vital- 
ity and  its  permanent  validity.  It  would  be  profit- 
less to  make  an  inventory  of  losses  in  the  sphere 
of  its  accessories.  It  is  too  soon  to  be  very  sure 
what  they  are  in  all  cases.  What  we  need  to  ob- 
serve is,  rather,  that  Christianity  has  already 
dropped  the  antiquated  view  of  the  world  and  of 
history,  and  has  found  its  place  in  the  new  world  of 
science.  The  fact  is  attested  by  the  highest  science 
as  well  as  by  the  latest  Christian  theologies.  It 
is  reflected  in  the  poetry  of  the  time.  The  minor 
Victorian  poets  are,  indeed,  smitten  with  the  sense 
of  disillusion.  That  "  sea  of  faith  once  at  the 
full,"  they 

Only  hear 
Its  melancholy,  long,  withdrawing  roar. 

Before  the  central  mysteries  of  life  and  death,  the 
poets  of  doubt,  as  Arnold  and  Clough,  bemoan 
the  failure  of  their  quest  and  the  retreat  of  the 
spiritual  vision  before  the  advance  of  science. 
The  poets  of  art,  as  Swinburne  and  Rossetti, 
either  deny  the  spiritual  vision,  or  use  its  asso- 


122  THE  NEW  PEACE 

ciated  sentiments  for  purely  aesthetic  purposes. 
These  schools,  however,  only  mark  painful  stages 
in  the  adaptive  development  of  English  poetry. 
Tennyson  and  Browning,  the  master-singers,  carry 
forward  that  development  to  a  higher  point. 
They  reflect  the  conflict  of  the  period,  but  do  not 
rest  in  it.  Tennyson  "  marks  the  final  stage  of 
agnosticism  feeling  its  way  towards  faith."  And 
faith  comes  at  last;  peace  follows  the  exhausting- 
struggle;  and,  as  he  crosses  the  bar  in  the  evening 
time,  he  is  singing  of  meeting  his  Pilot  face  to  face. 
In  Browning  the  transition  is  completed.  In  him 
the  hard-won  calm  assurance  of  Tennyson  swells 
to  the  note  of  triumph,  and  when  he  passed  out,  he 
left  this  last  word, —  a  personal  record,  it  is  true, 
but  also  the  goal  and  crown  of  the  Victorian  quest 
of  faith  in  the  new  world  of  science : 

One  who  never  turned  his  back,  but  marched  breast  forward, 

Never  doubted  clouds  would  break, 
Never  dreamed  tho'  right  were  worsted,  wrong  would  triumph, 
Held  we  fall  to  rise,  are  baffled  to  fight  better, 

Sleep  to  wake. 

Science  in  Religion 

I  have  given,  as  you  see,  a  natural  history  ac- 
count of  religion,  of  its  origin,  elements,  and  de- 
velopment to  its  latest  phase.  Let  us  be  on  our 
guard  against  the  subtle  spread  in  our  minds  of  the 


SCIENCE  IN  RELIGION  123 

feeling  that  such  an  account  of  religion  empties 
it  of  divine  content.  For  the  discovery  of  a  close- 
set  evolutionary  sequence  sets  aside  neither  the  in- 
telligent originating  energy,  nor  the  intelligent  sus- 
taining and  guiding  energy,  which  such  a  sequence 
presupposes.  If  God  could  enter  the  orderly  suc- 
cession of  natural  events  only  in  a  cloud,  and  stand 
to  do  His  work  only  in  places  where  we  can  put 
nothing  else,  we  might  question  His  having  any- 
thing to  do  with  a  history  which  can  be  described 
from  beginning  to  end  in  terms  of  cause  and  effect. 
But  when  we  understand,  as  we  do  now,  that  He 
is  already  within  all  natural  processes,  that  any 
sequence  is  a  sequence  because  it  is  the  expression 
of  the  unity  of  His  purpose,  then  an  evolutionary 
history  such  as  we  have  sketched  is  seen  to  be 
alive  with  His  presence  from  first  to  last.  If  we 
say  that  religion  is  psychological  in  origin,  it  is 
the  same  as  if  we  say  that  God  so  made  the  human 
mind  and  so  stationed  it  in  the  midst  of  relations 
that  the  thought  of  Him  was  natural  to  it.  And 
if  we  say  that  man,  in  the  course  of  his  slow  de- 
velopment out  of  savagery,  has  had  such  and  such 
experiences  with  the  thought  of  God,  all  that  we 
mean  is  that  man's  enlarging  capacity  and  widen- 
ing outlook  supplied  the  opportunity  of  a  divine 
revelation  of  increasing  clearness  and  fullness. 
God's  education  of  man  in  the  things  of  the  eternal 


i24  THE  NEW  PEACE 

world  loses  nothing  of  reality  by  suiting  itself  to 
the  natural  situation  of  the  pupil  and  adopting  the 
method  which  the  divine  operation  takes  every- 
where else.  Nor  is  such  an  education  through 
natural  evolutional  processes  one  whit  less  effi- 
cient than  would  have  been  a  neatly  graded  series 
of  religious  text-books  prepared  in  the  skies  and 
at  the  right  intervals  handed  out  to  chosen  teach- 
ers amidst  fitting  solemnities  on  the  summits  of 
sacred  mountains. 

For  religion  is  a  natural  phenomenon;  so 
natural  and  normal  to  the  human  constitution  that, 
even  from  the  biological  point  of  view,  it  may  be 
said  to  be  diagnostic  of  man  as  compared  with 
other  organisms.  It  is  of  universal  occurrence 
in  the  human  species.  Ethnology  knows  of  tribes 
which  cannot  count  beyond  three,  or  five,  or  six, 
and  which  have  neither  dwelling  nor  trace  of  cloth- 
ing, but  it  knows  of  none  which  is  devoid  of 
religion.  The  leading  assertions  to  the  contrary 
were  made  years  ago  by  Herbert  Spencer  and  Sir 
John  Lubbock  (now  Lord  Aveling),  but  Brinton, 
the  chief  authority  on  North  American  linguistics 
and  religion,  dismisses  these  assertions  by  saying 
curtly  that  neither  one  of  the  gentlemen  ever  saw 
a  savage  tribe.  Religion  is  a  more  distinctive 
feature  of  man's  nature  than  art,  or  music,  or 
language,    and  the   historic  development  of  this 


SCIENCE  IN  RELIGION  125 

feature  takes  the  same  place  and  observes  the 
same  laws  that  anthropology  recognizes  in  the  case 
of  every  other  fundamental  human  activity.  Nor 
does  religion  in  its  highest  phase  —  the  religion 
of  Jesus,  even  with  its  unique  additions  —  fall 
out  of  this  deep  harmony  with  God's  method  in 
other  sections  of  nature. 

Furthermore,  the  religious  consciousness  itself, 
the  moral  and  spiritual  faculties,  of  which  for  con- 
venience we  may  be  still  permitted  to  speak  as 
distinct  from  other  faculties,  are  themselves  the 
highest  product  of  evolution;  they  arise  out  of  the 
bosom  of  universal  nature.  And  they  are  still  at 
home  there.  For  religion,  with  which  they  have 
to  do,  is,  like  the  conclusions  of  science,  capable  of 
a  species  of  verification  upon  that  understanding. 
The  verification  is  both  observational  and  experi- 
mental. There  is  the  general  observation  that  the 
evolutionary  process  culminates  in  a  moral  being 
whose  further  historical  development  in  all  other 
respects  goes  forward  pari  passu  with  this  develop- 
ing moral  nature.  Then,  in  the  case  of  individu- 
als, it  is  observed  what  strength  the  religious 
element  brings  into  the  personality,  the  capacity 
for  achievement  rising  in  proportion  to  the  vivid- 
ness of  the  religious  consciousness.  The  practical 
mystic  is  invincible.  Think  of  Paul,  of  Luther,  of 
Cromwell,    and   the   long  line   of   the   dreamers 


126  THE  NEW  PEACE 

"  whose  mastery  over  the  temporal  comes  from 
their  passionate  devotion  to  the  eternal."  As  re- 
gards the  experimental  verification,  Ruskin  sug- 
gests that  the  only  inquiry  into  the  grounds  of  the 
Christian  religion  that  is  possible  to  simple  and 
busy  men, —  and  he  intimates  that  it  will  be  satis- 
factory,—  is  the  practical  trial  for  one  year  of  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  in  a  genuine  obedience  of 
its  teaching.  Besides  this  sort  of  test  another  is 
available.  In  the  case  of  human  beings  nature, 
by  means  of  accident,  or  heredity,  or  disease,  some- 
times presents  us  with  conditions  which  we  are 
forbidden  to  produce.  Nature  thus  occasionally 
produces  a  man  who  is  incapable  of  apprehending 
the  moral  order  and  of  responding  to  its  demand. 
Such  a  man  is  observed  to  be  abnormal  in  other 
respects  and  is  foredoomed  to  defeat  in  life. 

It  appears,  accordingly,  that  there  is  science  in 
religion.  Religion  is  grounded  not  only  in  the 
nature  of  man,  but  also  in  universal  nature;  and 
its  rise  and  history,  its  elements  and  varied  expres- 
sions in  cult  and  creed  are  capable  of  being  re- 
duced to  the  orderly  coherence  and  precision  of 
science.  It  will  not  matter  whether  you  call  such 
a  study  and  body  of  truth  anthropology,  or 
theology,  or  simply  the  science  of  religion.  Only 
let  me  remind  you  that  it  is  not  religion,  and  can 
be   no   substitute    for   it  in   personal   experience. 


SCIENCE  IN  RELIGION  127 

The  sense  of  order  and  unity  in  all  the  depart- 
ments of  one's  intellectual  housekeeping  may  co- 
exist with  dyspepsia  and  inanition  of  the  house- 
keeper. The  feeling  of  stability  and  rationalness 
is  good  for  all  our  conceptions,  including  the  reli- 
gious, but  it  will  not  feed  the. soul.  A  writer  tells 
us  that  on  the  coast  of  England  at  a  certain  point 
young  gulls  are  fed  for  the  market  on  curds  and 
gravel,  the  former  fattening  them,  the  latter  im- 
proving their  digestion.  They  had  besides,  he 
adds,  only  a  raw  gust  of  the  sea.  The  science  of 
religion  would  resemble  this  regimen  with  the 
curds  left  out.  It  will  meet  an  intellectual,  but 
not  a  religious  need.  It  has  no  ease  for  the 
burden  of  sin,  no  satisfaction  for  the  longing  after 
purity;  it  provides  no  fellowship  for  the  orphaned 
spirit;  opens  no  shelter  and  fountains  of  refresh- 
ment in  the  waste  places  of  life. 


LECTURE  IV 
RELIGION  IN  SCIENCE 


The  invisible  things  of  him  since  the  creation  of 
the  world  are  clearly  seen,  being  perceived  through 
the  things  that  are  made,  even  his  everlasting 
power  and  divinity. 

—  Paul,  Letter  to  the  Romans. 

It  is  true  that  a  little  Philosophy  inclineth  Mens 
Mindes  to  <(  Atheisme  " ;  But  depth  in  Philosophy 
bringeth  Mens  Mindes  about  to  "Religion: " 
For  while  the  Minde  of  Man  looketh  upon  Second 
Causes  scattered,  it  may  sometimes  rest  in  them, 
and  goe  no  further:  But  when  it  beholdeth  the 
chaine  of  them,  Confederate  and  Linked  together, 
it  must  needs  flie  to  "  Providence  "  and  "  Deitie.,} 
—  Bacon,  Essays,  "  Of  Atheisme!1 


RELIGION  IN  SCIENCE 

PROFESSOR  HUXLEY,  on  the  occasion  of 
his  receiving  a  public  distinction,  told  a  story 
of  a  member  of  the  Society  of  Friends  in  the  old 
pirate  days.  The  lover  of  peace  was  a  passenger 
on  a  ship  which  was  threatened  by  a  pirate  ship. 
When  the  captain  handed  him  a  pike  that  he 
might  take  part  in  the  common  defense,  he  de- 
clined, though  he  was  not  unwilling  to  stand  at  the 
gangway  and  wait  with  the  pike  in  his  hand. 
When  the  pirates  actually  began  to  come  on  board, 
he  pushed  the  sharp  end  of  his  pike  into  them,  with 
the  benevolent  advice  to  each  one,  "  Stay  on  thine 
own  ship,  friend." 

In  view  of  our  last  discussion  and  of  that  which 
is  now  proposed,  the  question  may  be  asked,  Are 
we  not  inviting  trouble  by  mixing  up  the  crews 
of  two  distinct  and  hostile  ships?  Does  not  rea- 
son say  to  faith,  with  the  pike  at  her  breast,  "  Stay 
on  thine  own  ship,  friend  "  ?  And  is  not  faith 
equally  concerned  that  reason  stay  on  board  its 
own  ship?  This  question  of  distinct  spheres  has 
been  heretofore  touched  upon  incidentally.  We 
must  now  consider  it  more  directly. 

As  was  remarked  before,  the  view  is  widely 
131 


132  THE  NEW  PEACE 

held.  Dr.  Osier,  for  example,  told  the  medical 
students  of  Toronto  University  some  eighteen 
months  ago  that  they  would  all  sooner  or  later 
come  to  the  point  where  they  would  try  "  to  mix 
the  waters  of  science  with  the  oil  of  faith."  He 
said  they  could  have  a  great  deal  of  both,  if  they 
could  only  keep  them  separate;  that  the  worry 
came  from  the  attempt  at  mixture.1  Dr.  Brinton 
declares  that  religion  and  science  arise  in  totally 
different  tracts  of  the  human  mind,  science  from 
the  conscious,  religion  from  the  sub-  or  uncon- 
scious intelligence,  and  that,  therefore,  there  is  no 
common  measure  between  them.2  We  have 
noted,  in  the  personal  experience  of  a  biologist 
and  of  a  critic  of  our  time,  how  these  two  powers 
of  the  mind  presented  themselves  concretely  in 
irreconcilable  opposition,  with  different  practical 
results.  In  the  one  case,  a  modus  vivendi  was  es- 
tablished; in  the  other,  faith  with  some  protest, 
surrendered  itself  to  the  mastery  of  the  rational 
faculty.  The  same  antithesis  appears  in  Tenny- 
son: 

If  e'er  when  faith  had  fall'n  asleep, 
I  heard  a  voice  "  believe  no  more," 
And  heard  an  ever  breaking  shore 

That  tumbled  in  the  Godless  deep; 

1  Johns  Hopkins  Univ.  Circulars,  Jan.,  1904. 

2  "  Relig.  of  Prim.  Peoples,"  331. 


SPHERES  133 

A  warmth  within  the  breast  would  melt 
The  freezing  reason's  colder  part, 
And  like  a  man  in  wrath  the  heart 

Stood  up  and  answered,  "  I  have  felt !  " 

No,  like  a  child  in  doubt  and  fear: 
But  that  blind  clamor  made  me  wise; 
Then  was  I  as  a  child  that  cries, 

But,  crying,  knows  his  father  near. 

This  blind  clamor  of  heart  and  head  has  served 
the  useful  purpose  of  bringing  into  clear  relief  the 
distinction  between  faith  and  belief,  a  distinction 
of  great  practical  importance.  Faith  is  seen  to 
be  of  the  essence  of  religion,  belief  concerns  the 
form  of  it.  Faith  is  the  spirit's  attitude  of  re- 
sponse to  the  unseen  world,  belief  is  the  mind's 
assent  to  propositions  about  it.  Faith,  whose 
stages  and  processes  escape  logical  manipulation, 
is  said  to  be  the  gift  of  God;  belief  is  a  state  of 
mind  reached  automatically  in  the  presence  of  a 
body  of  evidence,  and  cannot,  therefore,  be  en- 
joined as  a  duty.  Consequently,  faith  does  not 
have  to  wait  for  the  settlement  of  the  mind's 
perplexities,  and  the  odium  and  the  distress  of  re- 
ligious doubt  are  not  permitted  to  shadow  the 
clearness  of  the  heart's  response  to  the  divine  ap- 
peal, which  is  the  real  test  of  the  religious  experi- 
ence. 

And  yet,  widespread  and  useful  as  the  separa- 


i34  THE  NEW  PEACE 

tion  of  the  faith  function  and  the  rational  function 
has  been,  I  beg  to  remind  you  that  faith  and  rea- 
son are  powers  of  the  same  mind.  Their  strife 
is  a  civil  strife.  I  am  told  that  the  old  "  faculty 
psychology,"  which  treated  mind  as  a  sort  of 
parliament  of  powers  under  the  presidency  of  the 
will,  is  completely  superseded.  The  mind  is  a 
unit  and  acts  as  a  unit,  when  it  acts  at  all.  More- 
over, reason  is  no  more  characteristic  of  mind  than 
is  will,  which  includes  impulse,  desire,  and  in- 
stinct, and  is  close  akin  to  the  operation  which  we 
name  faith.  Indeed,  will  is  held  by  some  psy- 
chologists to  be  the  more  characteristic  action, 
intellect  being  the  expression  of  will.  If,  now,  we 
have  learned  thoroughly  the  lesson  which  Horace 
Bushnell  taught  nearly  fifty  years  ago,  and  have 
ceased  to  set  over  against  each  other  the  natural 
and  the  supernatural  as  mutually  exclusive;  if  we 
extend  the  natural  to  embrace  the  supernatural 
and  enthrone  God  over  all,  so  that  as  Dante  has 
it,  "  that  Emperor  who  reigns  above  rules  in  all 
parts,"  then  the  realm  of  nature  becomes  one  to 
its  farthest  confines,  and  the  same  mental  powers 
bring  us  into  relation  with  all  its  provinces.  The 
apprehending  faculty  we  call  reason  when  it  works 
under  the  relations  of  time  and  space  or  elaborates 
the  sense-given  ideas  of  the  material  world.  We 
call  it  faith  when  it  deals  with  the  timeless  and 


SPHERES 


*3S 


spaceless  world,  where  the  thought  symbols  that 
epitomize  time  and  space  experience  are  inap- 
plicable, and  where  a  certain  vagueness  of  out- 
line marks  objects  and  events,  probably  because 
we  have  as  yet  no  thought  symbols  for  them  ex- 
cept those  derived  from  the  still  misty  realm  of 
our  own  consciousness.  In  mind  functioning  as 
faith,  there  occur,  along  with  emotion,  impulse, 
and  desire,  also  cognitive  elements,  such  as  recog- 
nized traces  of  the  divine  movement  in  physical 
nature  or  history  or  personal  experiences,  traces 
as  real  as  the  footprints  of  long-vanished  reptiles 
in  the  Connecticut  Valley  sandstone;  and  in  the 
one  case  as  in  the  other,  with  these  materials  of 
observation,  the  imagination  sets  about  its  proper 
work  of  reconstruction.  Besides,  there  are  the 
observations  and  reconstructions  which  countless 
generations  back  of  us  have  made  and  which  are 
now  deeply  organized  in  our  constitution  and  rise 
up,  we  hardly  know  whence,  to  face  us  as  imperi- 
ous religious  instincts.  On  the  other  hand,  there 
is  an  intuitive  or  instinctive  element  in  reason. 
While,  as  Pascal  says,  we  infer  the  truth  of 
propositions,  we  feel  the  truth  of  first  principles. 
And  who  would  deny  the  instinct  of  causality,  of 
the  existence  of  the  external  world,  of  the  uni- 
formity of  natural  law,  which  are  presuppositions 
of  the  rational  process  everywhere? 


1 36  THE  NEW  PEACE 

It  appears,  therefore,  that  the  opposition  be- 
tween religious  intuition,  or  faith,  and  reflective 
analysis,  or  reason,  is,  as  Edward  Caird  says,  not 
a  real  opposition;  each  complements  the  other  in 
the  development  of  the  religious  life.  This  con- 
clusion will,  perhaps,  prepare  us  to  enter  more 
hopefully  upon  the  consideration  of  the  positive 
religious  affinities  and  implications  of  science. 

The  Spirit  of  Science 

I  ask  you  to  think  first  of  the  mental  attitude  of 
the  masters  of  science,  the  spirit  in  which  they  have 
undertaken  and  prosecuted  their  work. 

The  publication  in  1637  °f  Descartes'  "Dis- 
course on  Method  "  is  sometimes  fixed  upon  as  the 
beginning  of  the  modern  scientific  development. 
In  that  famous  treatise  one  of  the  central  prin- 
ciples is  the  consecration  of  doubt  as  a  duty;  and 
the  tradition  of  doubt,  or  skepticism,  has  clung 
tenaciously  to  the  scientific  calling  down  to  our 
own  day.  But  it  is  grossly  misinterpreted.  The 
apotheosis  of  doubt  is  supposed  to  be  the  chief  fea- 
ture of  the  cult  of  science,  which  offers  sacrifice 
on  no  other  altar.  The  case  is  far  otherwise. 
The  high-priest  who,  perhaps  more  than  any  other, 
is  responsible  for  this  apotheosis,  declares  that  he 
always  had  an  intense  desire  to  learn  how  to  dis- 
tinguish truth  from  falsehood,  in  order  to  be  clear 


SPIRIT  137 

about  his  actions  and  to  walk  sure-footedly  in 
this  life.  There  is,  he  said,  a  path  which  leads 
to  truth  so  surely  that  even  the  lowest  capacity  can 
find  it;  and  this  is  his  guiding  rule  by  which  a  man 
may  find  and  keep  that  path:  "  Give  unqualified 
assent  to  no  propositions  but  those  the  truth  of 
which  is  so  clear  that  they  cannot  be  doubted."  3 
Moreover,  among  the  laws  which  he  established 
for  his  own  self-government  occurs  this  fourth 
one:  "  Make  the  search  for  truth  the  business  of 
life." 

It  is  not  doubt  but  truth  to  which  Descartes  pays 
homage,  and  the  same  high  allegiance  has  bound 
all  the  priestly  line  downwards.  Copernicus 
doubts  the  Ptolemaic  astronomy  until  he  can 
verify  or  displace  it.  Vesalius  cannot  bow  at  once 
before  the  authority  of  Galen  and  the  authority 
of  Nature.  Lamarck,  poor,  old,  blind,  doubts 
the  world  which  contemns  him,  that  he  may  hold 
fast  the  new  truth  of  transformationism,  which  is 
his  sufficient  consolation.  Johannes  Muller  is  led 
by  doubt  of  the  current  teaching  to  a  fresh  exami- 
nation of  the  foundations  of  physiology  and  mor- 
phology, and  he  gathers  so  large  a  harvest  of  truth 
that  these  sciences  in  his  hands  enter  upon  a  new 
phase  of  development.     Lyell  doubts,  and  builds 

3  Quoted     by     Huxley,     Essays,     "  Descartes'     Discourse     on 
Method." 


138  THE  NEW  PEACE 

the  new  geology.  And  so  it  has  been  with  all 
those  who  have  given  a  new  pace  or  a  new  direc- 
tion to  our  growing  knowledge  of  nature.  Doubt 
is  the  pathway,  but  truth  is  the  goal. 

Indeed,  the  leading  characteristic  of  the  scien- 
tific spirit  is  its  whole-hearted  consecration  to 
truth,  its  openness  of  mind  before  every  problem, 
its  eagerness  to  press  the  solution  to  the  last  possi- 
ble point  of  completeness,  and  the  abiding  peace 
with  which  it  accepts  the  truth  with  all  the  conse- 
quences. And  you  observe  that  this  distinctive 
attitude  of  the  scientific  mind  clearly  involves  a 
moral  quality  and  a  capacity  which  is  not  unlike 
faith.  I  mean  the  capacity  to  see  and  bring  near 
a  lofty  ideal  and  a  nobleness  of  purpose  in  pur- 
suit of  it. 

We  are  told  that  when  Pasteur  died  a  writer  in 
one  of  the  Paris  newspapers  "  described  the  in- 
timate routine  of  the  life  at  the  Pasteur  Institute, 
and  compared  it  with  that  of  a  mediaeval  religious 
community.  A  little  body  of  men,  forsaking  the 
world  and  the  things  of  the  world,  had  gathered 
under  the  compulsion  of  a  great  idea.  They  had 
given  up  the  rivalries  and  personal  interests  of 
ordinary  men,  and,  sharing  their  goods  and  their 
work,  they  lived  in  austere  devotion  to  science, 
finding  no  sacrifice  of  health  or  money,  or  of  what 
men  call  pleasure,  too  great  for  the  common  ob- 


SPIRIT  139 

ject.  Rumors  of  war  and  peace,  echoes  of  the 
turmoil  of  politics  and  religion,  passed  unheeded 
over  their  monastic  seclusion;  but  if  there  came 
news  of  a  strange  disease  in  China  or  Peru,  a 
scientific  emissary  was  ready  with  his  microscope 
and  his  tubes  to  serve  as  a  missionary  of  the  new 
knowledge  and  the  new  hope  that  Pasteur  had 
brought  to  suffering  humanity.  The  adventurous 
exploits  and  the  patient  vigils  of  this  new  Order 
have  brought  about  a  revolution  in  our  knowledge 
of  disease."  4 

The  brilliant  research  of  the  late  surgeon 
Walter  Reid  upon  the  etiology  of  yellow  fever 
also  illustrates  the  method  and  the  spirit  of  science. 
He  goes  into  the  smitten  region  determined  to 
find  the  cause  of  the  dreadful  malady.  When 
wholly  negative  results  follow  the  bacteriological 
investigation,  men  volunteer  to  sleep  in  rooms 
where  the  garments  and  bedding  of  patients 
dead  of  the  disease  are  hung  and  shaken.  No 
one  of  the  volunteers  succeeds  in  contracting 
it  in  this  way,  and  then  they  try  sleeping  in  the 
garments  and  beds  of  yellow  fever  patients.  This 
also  failing,  Reid  bethinks  him  of  mosquitoes, 
which  had  been  shown  able  to  transmit  malaria. 
The  men  cheerfully  submit  themselves  to  the 
tremendous   risk   for  the  sake   of  others,    allow 

^Metchnikoff,   "The   Nature  of   Man,"   m. 


i4o  THE  NEW  PEACE 

mosquitoes  which  had  fed  on  the  blood  of  patients 
to  bite  them,  contract  the  disease,  and  demonstrate 
the  agent  of  its  spread. 

These  illustrations  have  already  suggested  that 
the  scientific  devotion  to  truth  is  animated  not 
simply  by  the  joy  of  the  quest,  but  also  by  the 
hope  of  some  sort  of  ministry  to  human  need. 
Physiology,  the  mother  of  sciences,  developed 
early  because  the  stimulus  of  such  a  ministry  was 
always  present  and  urgent.  But  even  in  the  case 
where  no  issue  of  practical  service  is  foreseen,  the 
investigator  is  sustained  by  the  conviction  that 
truth  is  the  most  precious  of  all  possessions  for  the 
shackles  it  will  break  and  the  light  it  will  throw 
on  the  dark  path  of  life.  What  is  it  that  the  aged 
Professor  Huxley  says?  "  If  I  am  to  be  remem- 
bered at  all,  I  should  like  to  be  remembered  as 
one  who  did  his  best  to  help  the  people."  On 
his  admission  to  a  seat  in  the  French  Academy, 
Berthelot,  who  revolutionized  organic  chemistry, 
said:  "  A  savant  worthy  of  the  name  consecrates 
a  disinterested  life  to  the  grand  work  of  our  epoch : 
I  mean  the  amelioration  of  the  lot  of  all  from  the 
rich  and  happy  to  the  humble,  the  poor,  and  the 
suffering.  .  .  I  have  tried  to  make  this  the  ob- 
ject and  end,  the  directing  purpose  of  my  exist- 
ence." Look  on  this  picture  of  Louis  Pasteur. 
He  is  leaning  over  the  head  of  an  enormous  bull- 


SPIRIT  141 

dog  whose  eyes  are  blood-shot  and  whose  body  is 
convulsed  with  spasms.  He  is  sucking  up  into  a 
tube  some  drops  of  saliva  at  the  distance  of  a 
finger's  length  from  the  foaming  head.  No  saint's 
self-effacement  under  a  lofty  impulse  surpasses  that 
which  this  laboratory  scene  exhibits.  No  Brother 
Bernard's  ardor  of  aspiration  which  kept  his  face 
upturned  towards  heaven  for  the  space  of  fifteen 
years  can  be  either  intenser  or  nobler  than  this 
scientist's  zeal  and  consecration  to  truth  and  hu- 
manity. While  he  was  engrossed  with  the  study  of 
Splenic  Fever  and  the  experiments  multiplied,  Pas- 
teur came  to  have  what  his  daughter  called  the  face 
of  an  approaching  discovery.  If  any  one  timidly 
asked  him  what  stage  the  investigation  had 
reached,  he  would  reply,  "  I  can  tell  you  nothing. 
I  dare  not  express  aloud  what  I  hope."  At  last 
one  day  he  came  up  from  his  laboratory  with  the 
face  of  triumph.  Tears  of  joy  were  in  his  eyes. 
As  he  embraced  the  members  of  the  family,  he 
said,  "  I  should  never  console  myself,  if  such  a 
discovery  as  my  assistants  and  I  have  just  made 
were  not  a  French  discovery." 

The  Faith  of  Science 

The  scheme  of  physical  nature  is  conceived 
to  be  something  like  this : —  Gross  matter  con- 
sists   of    groups    of    atoms.     Atoms    consist    of 


142  THE  NEW  PEACE 

groups  of  electrical  monads.  Electrical  monads, 
or  ions,  are  only  knots  in  the  ether.  Electricity 
itself,  the  reality  of  which  matter  is  the  sensible 
expression,  is  a  modification  of  the  ether,  the  stuff 
out  of  which  the  universe  is  wholly  made.  Now, 
the  intellectual  satisfaction  which  such  a  simple 
and  consistent  view  of  things  imparts  is  intense, 
almost  aesthetic,  as  Mr.  Balfour  has  remarked. 
Why  is  it  so?  Why  should  We  be  more  pleased 
to  think  of  the  sum  of  things  as  one  substance  tak- 
ing varied  manifestations,  than  to  think  of  it  as 
composed  of  the  seventy-odd  elementary  sub- 
stances which  are  inherently  different  from  one 
another?  There  is  no  answer  but  that  we  have 
our  scientific  prejudices,  one  of  which  is  the  preju- 
dice in  favor  of  simplicity  of  conception.  Strange 
to  say,  this  prejudice  remains  unshaken  in  the  pres- 
ence of  evidence  going  to  show  the  opposite  char- 
acter of  the  universe.  We  insist  that  the  universe 
is  simple  and  regular,  in  spite  of  apparent  complex- 
ity and  confusion.  We  are  not  content  to  ob- 
serve and  set  down  faithfully  what  nature  actually 
presents  to  our  senses;  but  we  must  needs  work 
it  over  and  bring  it,  with  some  violence  it  may 
be,  into  harmony  with  this  deep-seated,  ineradi- 
cable sentiment. 

What  we  have  here  is  obviously  a  sort  of  in- 
stinct about  the  nature  of  reality.     However  ob- 


FAITH  143 

scure  may  be  its  origin,  its  intimations  are  definite 
and  clear.  It  anticipates  and  interprets  sense  ex- 
perience. It  holds  the  torch  for  science  to  work 
by.  In  the  language  of  philosophy  it  would  be 
called  the  necessary  postulate  of  science.  I  prefer 
to  call  it  the  faith  of  science.  Science  cannot  ex- 
plain its  faith  in  the  unity  and  regularity  of  nature, 
neither  can  it  get  on  without  it. 

It  will  be  useful  to  set  the  faith  of  science  side 
by  side  with  the  faith  of  religion.  This  has  been 
done,  with  a  clearness  and  force  which  I  cannot 
undertake  to  improve,  by  the  late  Professor  Joseph 
Le  Conte:  "  The  necessary  postulate  of  science, 
without  which  scientific  activity  would  be  impossi- 
ble, is  the  rational  order  of  the  universe;  and 
similarly  the  necessary  postulate  of  religion,  with- 
out which  religious  activity  would  be  impossible, 
is  the  moral  order  of  the  universe.  As  science 
postulates  the  final  triumph  of  reason,  so  religion 
must  postulate  the  final  triumph  of  righteousness. 
Science  believes  in  the  rational  order,  or  in  law,  in 
spite  of  apparent  confusion.  ...  So  also  religion 
is  right  in  her  unmistakable  belief  in  the  moral 
order,  in  spite  of  apparent  disorder  and  evil.  .  .  . 
We  may,  if  we  like  —  as  many  do  —  reject  the 
faith  in  the  Infinite  Goodness,  and  thereby  paralyze 
our  religious  activity;  but,  then,  to  be  consistent, 
we  must  also  reject  the  faith  in  the  Infinite  Reason, 


i44  THE  NEW  PEACE 

and  thereby  paralyze  our  scientific  activity."  5 

I  may  add  that  the  faith  of  science  is  not  with- 
out justification.  Schiller  says  somewhere  that 
Nature  stands  in  an  eternal  alliance  with  Genius, 
and  always  honors  its  demands.  For  example, 
it  is,  according  to  Helmholtz,  in  the  highest  de- 
gree remarkable  to  see  how  large  a  number  of 
comprehensive  theorems,  the  proof  of  which  taxes 
the  highest  powers  of  mathematical  analysis,  were 
found  by  Faraday  without  the  use  of  a  single 
mathematical  formula,  by  a  kind  of  intuition  with 
instinctive  certainty.  And  so,  to  the  universal 
intuition  of  rationality  and  order,  Nature  responds 
with  widening  revelations  of  the  supremacy  of 
law.  The  progress  of  discovery  is  the  practical 
justification  of  the  scientific  faith  under  which  the 
progress  was  made.  And  we  have  noticed  on  a 
former  occasion  that  when  religious  faith  makes 
its  venture  upon  the  assumption  of  righteousness 
at  the  heart  of  things,  it  is  not  disappointed.  The 
universe  cashes  its  cheques  in  the  currency  of  in- 
ward peace  and  a  heightened  efficiency  for  achieve- 
ment in  the  outer  life.  The  stars  in  their  courses 
fight  on  its  side  for  the  supremacy  of  righteous- 
ness. 

5  Essay  in  Royce's  "  The  Conception  of  God." 


IMPLICATIONS  145 

The  Bearing  of  Science 

In  "  Modern  Painters  "  occurs  a  chapter  "  Of 
the  Novelty  of  Landscape."  A  man  acquainted 
with  Greek,  Roman,  and  Mediaeval  art  is  sup- 
posed to  enter  a  room  in  which  he  sees  for  the 
first  time  a  display  of  modern  paintings.  His  first 
impression  would  be  that .  there  is  something 
strange  about  the  mind  of  these  modern  people. 
Mountains,  lakes,  trees,  and  bits  of  stone,  clouds 
and  runlets  of  water, —  nobody  ever  seemed  to  be 
interested  in  these  things  before.  The  human  in- 
terest, which  wholly  occupied  the  earlier  painters, 
seems  to  have  disappeared  altogether.  Not  a 
picture  of  the  gods  or  heroes,  of  saints  or  angels 
or  demons,  of  councils  or  battles;  but  mountain 
peaks  and  ravines,  forests  and  stretches  of  blue 
sky,  stone  walls,  withered  sticks,  and  flying  frogs ! 
Whether  this  extraordinary  change  of  art  sub- 
jects is  one  to  excite  pride  or  not,  it  is,  as 
Ruskin  says,  assuredly  one  to  excite  our  deepest 
interest.  It  is  one  of  the  expressions  of  the  new 
sympathy  with  the  phases  of  external  nature  which 
is  one  of  the  picturesque  features  of  our  period. 
This  feeling  occurs,  indeed,  in  individual  cases 
from  early  times  in  literary  history,  as  in  Horace 
and  Lucretius  and  Theocritus,  and  in  some  of  the 
early  English  poets;  but  to-day  it  is  well-nigh  uni- 


146  THE  NEW  PEACE 

versal,  as  is  shown  by  the  volume  and  popularity 
of  out-door  literature  with  its  invitation  — 

Come  forth  into  the  light  of  things, 
Let  Nature  be  your  teacher. 

This  later  phase  of  it  may  be  traced  back  to  the 
eighteenth  century.  There  were  in  the  realm  of 
letters  Rousseau  and  Cowper  and  Wordsworth, 
who  were  industrious  propagators  of  the  senti- 
ment. There  was  the  genial  naturalism  of  Sel- 
borne,  who  taught  Englishmen  the  inherent  in- 
terest of  common  natural  phenomena.  Another 
representative  of  science  was  the  Swiss  geologist 
DeSaussure,  who  more  than  any  other  dissipated 
the  ideas  of  horror  and  danger  associated  with 
mountains,  and  taught  the  world  the  infinite  charm 
and  variety  of  mountain  scenery.  In  the  latter 
half  of  the  nineteenth  century  this  sympathetic 
response  to  all  nature's  varying  moods  grew 
rapidly  under  the  stimulus  of  the  general  scien- 
tific movement  of  the  time  and  the  influence  of 
men  like  E.  Krause  in  Germany,  Richard  Jef- 
feries  and  Ruskin  in  England,  and,  on  this  side, 
"  Old  Silver-Top,"  as  John  Burroughs  has  been 
affectionately  called,  and  his  younger  followers, 
as  Roberts,  W.  J.  Long,  and  Thompson-Seton. 

Nature,  which  was  once  devoid  of  interest  when 
she  was  not  repulsive,  is  now  invested  with  at- 


IMPLICATIONS  147 

tractions  which  are  on  every  poet's  tongue.  We 
have  acquired  an  eye  for  all  her  beauty,  an  ear 
for  all  her  music,  a  heart  open  to  all  the  sug- 
gestions of  her  solemn  grandeur,  her  deep  repose, 
her  infinite  order.  She  refreshes  us  in  the  inward 
part,  she  rebukes  our  strife  and  pettiness,  she 
elicits  and  confirms  our  aspirations.  We  no 
longer  have  to  make  our  way  through  an  enemy's 
country  at  the  risk  of  losing  our  religion  at  every 
step.  The  later  and  deeper  scientific  interpreta- 
tion of  Nature  makes  her  our  ally  and  friend. 
One  is  not  surprised,  therefore,  to  hear  Profes- 
sor Shaler  saying  that  it  was  a  more  profound 
grasp  of  science  itself  that  brought  him  back  from 
an  early  excursion  into  religious  negations.6  For 
science  has  now  laid  bare  the  solid  foundations 
on  which  religion  reposes.  Let  us  take  note  of 
some  particulars. 

1.  The  Unity  of  Nature.  I  have  a  mathe- 
matical friend  who  says  that  mathematics,  as  well 
as  the  Bible,  makes  the  proclamation,  "  Hear,  O 
Israel,  the  Lord  thy  God  is  one  God."  He  ex- 
plains that  the  number  of  curves  of  the  fourth 
power  of  the  unknown  quantity  is  countless,  and 
those  of  the  fifth  power  are  even  more  numerous; 
and  yet  he  shows  me  an  expression  containing  a 
very  few  letters  that  will  apply  to  the  length  of 

6  "  The  Interpretation  of  Nature,"  iv. 


148  THE  NEW  PEACE 

every  possible  curve,  another  that  will  apply  to 
the  surface  described  by  the  revolution  of  every 
possible  curve,  and  another  to  the  solid  described 
by  the  revolution  of  every  possible  curve.  In 
short,  for  this  infinite  diversity,  one  comprehend- 
ing principle. 

We  are  able  to-day  to  recognize  relations  where 
formerly  only  discrete  facts  were  perceived.  We 
discover  interdependence  and  harmony  where  to 
the  older  conception  there  appeared  only  isolation, 
if  not  discord.  For  us  the  doctrine  of  the  ether 
and  the  law  of  gravitation  bind  the  myriad  worlds 
of  space  into  a  consistent  universe.  The  law  of 
evolution  unifies  the  totality  of  nature  as  it  exists 
to-day  by  supplying  the  one  method  of  its  origin, 
as  the  protoplasm  theory  imparts  structural  unity 
to  the  varied  forms  of  organic  nature.  The  law 
of  the  correlation  of  energy  obliterates  the  ter- 
ritorial boundaries  which  formerly  divided  off  the 
phenomena  of  nature  into  distinct  and  unrelated 
regions.  It  might  have  been  foreseen  that,  after 
the  unity  of  external  nature  was  discovered,  the 
moral  and  spiritual  sphere  could  not  long  with- 
hold the  secret  of  its  inner  consistency  and  rela- 
tionships. Here  also  boundaries  have  taken 
themselves  up  and  off,  and  the  separate  and  war- 
ring provinces  of  the  spirit  have  fused  into  one 
realm  under  one  law.     So  that  the  natural  and  the 


UNITY  i49 

supernatural  no  longer  threaten  and  confound  one 
another  across  an  impassable  chasm.  There  is 
no  chasm.  The  supernatural  is  natural,  and  the 
natural  is  supernatural.  Even  that  inveterate 
antithesis  of  matter  and  spirit  shows  signs  of  dis- 
solving. In  some  of  the  seers  of  the  race,  as 
Plato  and  Dante,  matter  and  spirit  compound  for 
their  differences  and  almost  melt  into  one  another; 
in  the  impassioned  glow  of  their  conceptions,  as 
Walter  Pater  points  out,  the  spiritual  attains  visi- 
bility and  the  material  drops  its  earthiness.  But 
with  a  new  stress  and  inflection  we  are  now  asking 
whether  matter  is  not  simply  the  signal  of  the 
spirit's  activity,  the  theatre  where  the  spirit  dis- 
ports itself,  the  word  in  which  the  spirit  seeks 
expression,  the  garment  of  beauty  in  which  the 
spirit  arrays  itself. 

Moreover,  the  divine  and  the  human  nature 
draw  into  a  close  fellowship,  the  human  nature 
being  divine  in  its  origin  and  aspiration,  and  the 
divine  nature  finding  that  it  can  express  itself  in  the 
human.  The  divine  nature  no  longer  sits  apart  in 
remote  cold  clouds  concerning  itself  with  man  only 
to  impose  an  arbitrary  legislation  from  which  it  is 
itself  exempt.  On  the  contrary,  with  the  new  light 
on  that  ancient  word  "  Let  us  make  man  in  our 
image,"  we  now  see  that  community  of  nature 
necessitates  one  law.     There  is  not  one  righteous- 


1 5o  THE  NEW  PEACE 

ness  below  and  another  above  the  clouds.  The 
coinage  of  the  moral  realm  must  pass  current  in 
heaven  and  on  earth  alike. 

Lotze  remarks  that,  "  to  us  who  admire  the 
isolated  remains,  the  thought  expressed  in  many 
an  ancient  work  of  art  seems  to  be  too  slight  in 
comparison  with  the  labor  expended  in  presenting 
it  in  sculpture ;  but  such  works  were  then  intended 
to  serve  as  fitting  adornments  in  edifices  the  most 
insignificant  details  of  which  were  pervaded  by  a 
coherent  idea  of  harmonious  beauty  of  form." 
So,  isolated  and  apparently  insignificant  details  of 
nature  acquire  meaning  and  become  worthy  and 
noble  in  the  light  of  their  relation  to  the  majestic 
structure  of  which  they  are  constituent  parts.  But 
this  consideration  is  not  all.  The  unified  system 
of  things  revealed  by  science  is  the  necessary 
corollary  of  the  religious  faith  in  the  infinite  per- 
sonal Intelligence.  If  God  exists,  this  is  precisely 
such  a  world  as  He  would  make.  There  can 
hardly  be  any  doubt  that  the  growing  conception 
of  the  unity  of  nature  which  has  marked  the  last 
three  or  four  decades  had  much  to  do  with  the 
unmistakable  movement  towards  faith  during  the 
same  period. 

2.  The  New  Teleology.  But  one  may  say 
that  nature  may  be  a  self-consistent  unit,  and  yet 
be  nothing  more  than  a  machine,  and  therefore 


DESIGN  151 

morally  indifferent;  or,  if  it  have  moral  signifi- 
cance, what  assurance  have  we  that  it  is  good  and 
not  bad?  Indeed,  one  meets  such  views  now  and 
again  in  contemporary  literature.  For  example, 
in  his  well-known  lecture  on  "  Art  and  Morality," 
Ferdinand  Brunetiere  declares  that  nature's  in- 
difference to  us  is  equalled  only  by  her  lack  of 
regard  for  all  that  we  call  by  the  name  of  good 
or  bad.  He  goes  still  further  and  says,  "  Na- 
ture is  immoral,  thoroughly  immoral;  .  .  .  there 
is  no  vice  of  which  she  does  not  give  us  an  ex- 
ample, nor  any  virtue  from  which  she  does  not 
dissuade  us  ";  and  in  her  failures,  exceptions,  and 
monstrosities  he  thinks  he  finds  evidence  that  she 
is  no  more  true  than  she  is  good. 

There  can  be  no  surprise  that  laymen  in  science 
take  such  a  view  when  it  is  remembered  that  sci- 
entists themselves  have  given  the  cue.  So  acute 
and  influential  a  man  as  Professor  Huxley  was 
not  a  little  perplexed  by  what  he  considered  the 
conflict  between  the  cosmic  process  and  the  ethical 
process  which  is  observed  in  human  history.  In 
his  famous  Romanes  Lecture  on  "  Evolution  and 
Ethics"  in  1893,  he  said:  "The  practice  which 
is  ethically  best  —  what  we  call  goodness  or  virtue 
—  involves  a  course  of  conduct  which,  in  all  re- 
spects, is  opposed  to  what  leads  to  success  in  the 
cosmic   struggle   for  existence.     In   the   place   of 


152  THE  NEW  PEACE 

ruthless  self-assertion  it  demands  self-restraint. 
...  It  repudiates  the  gladiatorial  theory  of  ex- 
istence." He  thinks,  furthermore,  that,  since  both 
have  been  evolved,  there  is  as  much  natural  sanc- 
tion for  the  immoral  sentiments  as  for  the  moral. 
Accordingly,  it  seems,  on  the  face  of  things,  that 
the  ancient  philosophy  of  pessimism  gains  in  the 
evolution  theory  a  new  and  broader  basis;  the  doc- 
trine that  Satan  is  the  Prince  of  this  world  gets 
a  scientific  foundation.  The  struggle  for  exist- 
ence is  as  cruel  as  it  is  inevitable.  The  tyranny 
of  strength  and  cunning  is  unmitigated.  Teeth 
and  claws  go  at  their  bloody  business  without 
mercy.  And  all  life  together  is  helpless  under  the 
mighty  hand  of  fate,  which  seems  supreme  in  the 
physical  world.  Vain  is  the  cry  of  the  innumer- 
able tender  things  which  are  crushed  in  the  grind 
of  the  great  machine. 

But  we  need  to  take  a  second  and  deeper  look 
at  the  ethical  bearing  of  the  evolution  theory,  to 
see  whether  this  dark  and  bloody  inference  is 
justified.  The  trouble  with  the  inference  lies  in 
the  limited  range  of  the  induction,  in  the  lack  of 
perspective.  Its  observation  is  too  exclusively 
microscopic.  One  day  when  this  matter  was  in 
discussion  Tennyson  told  the  story  of  a  tender- 
hearted Brahmin  who,  on  observing  with  the  mi- 
croscope  how  the   creatures   in   the   world   of   a 


DESIGN  153 

water-drop  were  devouring  one  another,  was 
moved  with  a  boundless  indignation  at  an  instru- 
ment which  made  such  a  revelation  of  heartless 
cruelty,  and  smashed  it  into  fragments.  What 
we  require  is,  not  to  make  this  sort  of  obser- 
vation impossible,  but  to  supplement  the  micro- 
scope with  the  telescope,  to  lift  our  eyes  from  de- 
tails to  tendencies,  from  the  individual  to  the 
species.  I  think  we  shall  see  that  "  the  gladiator- 
ial theory  of  existence  "  is  unwarranted. 

Let  me  remind  you  that  the  terms  in  which  it 
is  expressed  —  self-assertion,  struggle,  the  hunt- 
ing down  of  competitors  —  are  figures  of  speech 
in  scientific  literature,  and  when  they  are  inter- 
preted in  strict  literalness  are  wholly  inapplicable. 
We  are  not  justified  in  reading  human  standards 
and  sentiments  into  the  behavior  of  the  lower 
animals.  The  butcher-bird  which  rends  a  tit- 
mouse limb  from  limb  is  no  more  cruel  than  the 
human  butcher  who  quarters  beef  for  the  market; 
nay,  than  that  same  Texas  steer  was  when  his 
lithe  tongue  lapped  in  the  helpless  tender  herbage 
of  the  prairie.  If  a  man  should  rend  a  titmouse 
limb  from  limb,  the  action  would  be  properly 
called  cruel;  but  the  butcher-bird  is  not  a  man, 
and  its  action  is  neither  good  nor  bad,  for  it  is 
not  performed  in  the  realm  of  moral  ideas.  It 
is  true  the  bird  is  not  merciful;  neither  is  it  moved 


i54  THE  NEW  PEACE 

by  malice.  Besides,  it  is  not  improbable  that  the 
exposure  of  the  titmouse  tribe  to  such  a  peril 
reacts  favorably  upon  the  tribal  constitution,  im- 
proving in  the  long  run  its  powers  of  flight  and 
its  wits.  If  so,  whatever  view  the  impaled  in- 
dividual titmouse  may  take,  the  butcher-bird  is 
the  friend  of  the  species,  a  blessing  in  disguise. 
And  it  is  to  be  remembered,  further,  that  the  birds 
of  prey  are  not  to  be  compared  in  the  number 
either  of  species  or  of  individuals  with  the  vege- 
table feeders.  There  is,  in  fact,  no  adequate 
ground  for  the  popular  view  which,  under  the 
theory  of  the  struggle  for  existence,  construes  the 
world  as  an  arena  where  all  organisms,  man  in- 
cluded, fight  one  another  to  the  death.  When 
species  are  exterminated  at  all,  it  is  not  in  a  whole- 
sale slaughter,  but  by  the  gradual  and  usually 
painless  operation  of  forces  extending  over  a  suc- 
cession of  generations,  such  as  the  failure  of  cor- 
respondence with  the  total  environment,  which 
may  or  may  not  include  animals  of  prey.  A  most 
effective  factor  and  one  which  involves  no  suf- 
fering is  the  progressive  diminution  of  the  degree 
of  fertility  necessary  to  the  maintenance  of  the 
species.  Another  is  the  weakness  or  rigidity  of 
organization  which  retards  unduly  its  adaptation 
to  a  changing  environment. 

With  this   explanation  of  terms,   we  may  ad- 


DESIGN  155 

vance  to  consider  the  general  trend  of  things  under 
the  evolution  process.  Now,  it  is  involved  in  the 
nature  of  the  process  that  "  the  first  in  conception 
is  the  last  in  execution  " ;  a  tendency  is  to  be 
judged  by  its  issue.  The  last  term  of  an  evolu- 
tionary series  may  prophesy  what  is  yet  to  follow, 
but  it  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  it  also  interprets 
what  has  gone  before.  The  nature  of  man  is 
the  crown  of  the  process  of  evolution.  We  need 
not  inquire  now  whether  a  still  higher  creature 
is  possible  to  it.  We  only  need  to  recognize  man 
as  the  latest  and  highest  term  in  a  long  series 
which  stretches  back  to  the  dawn  of  organic  life 
on  earth.  His  physical  frame  is  the  most  complex 
in  structure  and  the  most  efficient  in  action  in  the 
whole  series.  His  mental  life  is  the  widest,  the 
fullest,  and  the  most  varied.  His  moral  nature 
is  so  much  advanced  beyond  what  appears  in  any 
of  the  creatures  below  him  that  some  deny  its 
hereditary  connection  with  any  possible  germs  of 
morality  anywhere  else  in  the  series.  This  highly 
endowed  creature  whose  most  distinctive  feature 
is  his  capacity  to  discern  the  good  and  the  bad, 
standing  thus  as  the  climax  of  the  natural  achieve- 
ment, throws  backward  over  all  the  lower  grades 
of  organization  a  light  in  which  the  meaning  and 
purpose  of  all  grow  plain.  In  this  light  Nature 
is  seen  to  be  on  the  move.     Things  are  marching 


156  THE  NEW  PEACE 

out  of  a  dim  past  into  a  widening  future.  The 
struggle  for  existence  is  transformed  into  "  a  race 
for  perfection."  The  cosmic  process  is  itself 
driving  forward  to  an  ethical  issue,  and  that  once 
reached  the  development  is  continued  into  relig- 
ion and  social  regulations.  And  how  can  the 
cosmic  process  be  in  conflict  with  the  ethical  pro- 
cess which,  even  according  to  Professor  Huxley, 
was  produced  by  it?  Will  the  mother  repudiate 
her  offspring? 

In  this  general  purposive  progress  from  the 
inorganic  to  the  organic,  from  sensation  to  mind, 
from  mind  to  morals  and  religion, —  from  the 
clod  to  conscience, —  we  have  ample  compensation 
for  the  surrender,  upon  the  demand  of  science, 
of  Paley's  minute  design,  the  teleology  of  details. 
Shall  I  appeal  to  the  authority  of  Darwin?  He 
cannot,  indeed,  allow  that  the  variations  of  or- 
ganic beings  are  designed,  but  he  says,  "  If  we 
consider  the  whole  universe,  the  mind  refuses  to 
look  at  it  as  the  outcome  of  chance,  i.e.,  without 
design  or  purpose."  7  And  here  is  Huxley  saying 
that  "  it  is  only  the  common  and  coarser  forms 
of  teleology  that  fail  when  tested  by  natural  selec- 
tion. There  is  a  wider  teleology  which  is  not 
touched  by  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  but  is  actu- 
ally based  upon  the  fundamental  proposition  of 

7  "  More  Letters,"  I,  395. 


NEW  FRONT  157 

evolution." 

The  end  and  explanation,  the  climax  and  de- 
nouement of  the  divine  drama  in  creation,  is  the 
emergence  from  the  bosom  of  universal  nature 
of  a  spirit  which  can  stand  erect  and  speak  face 
to  face  with  God.  And  God  is  repaid  for  aeons 
of  waiting  and  travail,  for  it  breaks  His  infinite 
solitude,  His  uncompanioned  journeyings  through 
wildernesses  of  insensate  things,  and  presents  Him 
with  a  person,  in  some  way  his  counterpart,  in 
possibility  His  friend.  The  rise  through  succes- 
sive grades  of  being  up  to  this  fulfilment  of  the 
creative  impulse  is  symbolized  in  epitome  in 
Seraphita's  farewell  on  the  eve  of  her  translation 
when  she  looks  out  over  the  mountain-girt  fiord 
from  the  cliff  of  the  Sieg:  "  Farewell,  rock  of 
granite,  thou  shalt  be  a  flower:  farewell  flower, 
thou  shalt  be  a  dove :  farewell  dove,  thou  shalt  be 
a  woman;  farewell  woman,  thou  shalt  be  Suffering; 
farewell  man,  thou  shalt  be  Belief;  farewell,  you, 
who  shall  be  all  love  and  prayer!  " 

3.  The  Idealistic  Interpretation  of  Nature. — 
The  illuminating  and  supporting  influence  of 
science  upon  religion  is  not  restricted  to  the  two 
generalizations  which  we  have  now  considered. 
There  is  another  of  perhaps  even  richer  signifi- 
cance to  which,  as  I  conclude  these  lectures,  I  must 
call  your  attention. 


158  THE  NEW  PEACE 

Within  the  last  thirty  or  forty  years  there  has 
been  in  progress  a  marked  change  of  feeling  on 
the  part  of  leading  men  of  science  respecting  the 
ultimate  reality,  the  deeper  meaning  of  the  uni- 
verse; so  that  to-day  scientific  opinion  presents  a 
radically  different  front  on  this  paramount  ques- 
tion. About  the  middle  decades  of  the  last  cen- 
tury it  seems  to  have  been  flushed  with  its  recent 
conquests  and  to  have  been  in  high  conceit  with 
its  well-nigh  omnipotent  method.  It  was  already 
well  advanced  in  its  mission  of  plucking  the  heart 
of  mystery  out  of  universal  nature,  and  but  a  few 
years  more  of  the  unflinching  application  of  the 
laws  of  physics  and  chemistry  would  suffice  to  fin- 
ish the  business  and  set  man  free  from  the  thral- 
dom of  the  last  superstition.  It  was  dogmatic 
and  arrogant.  Latterly,  however,  scientists  have 
recognized  with  increasing  clearness  that  they 
have  been  occupied  with  surface  problems  whose 
solution  has  merely  led  them  in  to  the  central 
mysteries,  and  before  these  they  stand  in  a  help- 
less impotence  which  has  completely  changed  their 
tone  and  attitude.  The  physical  tests  on  which 
they  have  hitherto  relied  cannot  be  applied  here, 
and  the  impression  is  produced  that  the  essence 
of  things,  which  refuses  to  respond  to  these  tests, 
is  after  all  not  physical.  Haeckel  himself  cites 
a  number  of  cases  of  such  changes  of  view,  such 


NEW  FRONT  159 

psychological  metamorphoses,  as  he  calls  them, — 
Virchow,  Emil  du  Bois-Reymond,  Wundt,  Von 
Baer.  He  seeks  to  explain  them  as  due  to  the 
increase  of  prejudice  and  the  loss  of  energy  at- 
tendant upon  the  decay  of  the  brain  as  old  age 
comes  on.  He  must  have  forgotten  this  "  ex- 
planation "  when  he  came  to  write  his  preface, 
in  which  he  says:  "  For  fully  half  a  century  has 
my  mind's  work  proceeded,  and  I  now,  in  my  sixty- 
sixth  year,  may  claim  that  it  is  mature " !  8 
In  reality  these  changes  spring  out  of  the  fuller 
recognition  of  the  limitations  of  the  scientific 
method,  the  ease  with  which  the  assurance  of  a 
predetermined  negation  may  be  broken  down. 
With  Browning's  acute  old  Bishop,  these  scientists 
say: 

How  can  we  guard  our  unbelief, 
Make  it  bear  fruit  to  us?  —  the  problem  here. 
Just  when  we  are  safest,  there's  a  sunset-touch, 
A  fancy  from  a  flower-bell,  some  one's  death, 
A  chorus-ending  from  Euripides, — 
And  that's  enough  for  fifty  hopes  and  fears, 
As  old  and  new  at  once  as  Nature's  self, 
To  rap  and  knock  and  enter  in  our  soul, 
Take  hands  and  dance  there  a  fantastic  ring, 
Round  the  ancient  idol,  on  its  base  again  — 
The  grand  Perhaps.     We  look  on  helplessly; 
There  the  old  misgivings,  crooked  questions,  are. 

Science   is   much  more  modest  than  formerly  in 

8  "  The  Riddle  of  the   Universe,"  Preface,  vii. 


160  THE  NEW  PEACE 

the   presence   of  the   universal   religious   instinct. 

Not  only  so.  There  are  positive  declarations 
on  every  hand  that  the  conception  of  the  physical 
world  as  a  mechanism  constructed  on  a  rigid 
mathematical  plan  u  has  no  more  objective  reality 
than  the  circles  of  latitude  and  longitude  on  the 
sun."  Hear  this  word  of  Professor  Karl  Pear- 
son: "Step  by  step  men  of  science  are  coming 
to  recognize  that  mechanism  is  not  at  the  bottom 
of  phenomena."  And  this  from  the  President  of 
the  British  Association  last  year:  "As  natural 
science  grows  it  leans  more,  not  less,  upon  an 
idealistic  interpretation  of  the  universe."  Indeed, 
all  men,  excepting  of  course  always  the  eminent 
zoologist  of  Jena,  all  men  are  feeling  now  that 
a  system  of  things  out  of  which  by  natural  proc- 
esses mind  arose  must  itself  be  mental.  And 
there  seems  to  be  no  longer  any  reason  to  ques- 
tion Sir  Oiver  Lodge's  recent  statement, — "  the 
region  of  religion  and  the  region  of  the  completer 
science  are  one." 

I  think  of  Science  as  passing  to  and  fro  in  God's 
garden,  busy  with  its  forms  of  beauty,  its  fruits 
and  flowers,  its  creeping  thing,  its  beast  and  bird, 
the  crystal  shut  in  its  stones,  the  gold  grains  of  its 
sands,  and  coming  now  at  length  in  the  cool  of  the 
long  day  upon  God  Himself  walking  in  His  garden. 


Princeton  Theological  S e "n ' n f ry  L i b r a r i e s 


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